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CHARACTERISTICS. 



^5fietc$e?f ana €$tti>& 



BY 



A. P. RUSSELL, 

AUTHOR OF "LIBRARY NOTES." 



TITLES . 



The Conversation of Coleridge. 

Sarah Siddons. 

Doctor Johnson. 

Lord Macaulay. 

Lamb. 

Burns. 



The Christianity of Woolman. 

John Randolph and John Brown. 

The Audacity of Foote. 

Habit. 

The Habit of Detraction. 

The Art of Living. 




BOSTON: 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY. 

New York: 11 East Seventeenth Street. 






Copyright, 18S3, 
By ADDISON PEALE RUSSELL. 

All rights reserved. 



/i-sfm 



The Riverside Press, Camhridge : 
Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton & Co. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. The Conversation of Coleridge i 

II. Sarah Siddons ........ 23 

III. Doctor Johnson . . , 52 

IV. Lord Macaulay 74 

V. Lamb 105 

VI. Burns 132 

VII. The Christianity of Woolman .... 160 

VIII. John Randolph and John Brown . 195 

IX. The Audacity of Foote 234 

X. Habit 255 

XI. The Habit of Detraction 281 

XII. The Art of Living 309 



CHARACTERISTICS. 



THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE* 

De Quincey. It was, I think, in the month of August, 
but certainly in the summer season, and certainly in the 
year 1807, that I first saw this illustrious man, the largest 
and most spacious intellect, the subtlest and the most 
comprehensive, in my judgment, that has yet existed 
amongst men. . . . Little points of business being set- 
tled, Coleridge, like some great river, the Orellana, or 
the St. Lawrence, that had been checked and fretted by 
rocks, or thwarting islands, and suddenly recovers its vol- 
ume of waters, and its mighty music, swept at once, as if 
returning to his natural business, into a continuous strain 
of eloquent dissertation, certainly the most novel, the 
most finely illustrated, and traversing the most spacious 
fields of thought, by transitions the most just and logical, 
that it was possible to conceive. 

Hazlitt. I had heard a great deal of Coleridge's 
powers of conversation, and was not disappointed. In 
fact, I never met with any thing at all like them, either 
before or since. I could easily credit the accounts which 
were circulated of his holding forth to a large party of 
ladies and gentlemen, an evening or two before, on the 
Berkeleian Theory, where he made the whole material 

* " Not since Pythagoras does an equal charm seem to have graced 
the speech of any man." 



2 CHARACTERISTICS. 

universe look like a transparency of fine words ; and 
another story of his being asked to a party at Birma- 
ghan's, of his smoking tobacco and going to sleep after 
dinner, on a sofa, where the company found him, to their 
no small surprise, which was increased to wonder when 
he started up of a sudden, and rubbing his eyes, looked 
about him, and launched into a three hours' description 
of the third heaven, of which he had had a dream. 

H. N. Coleridge. Throughout a long-drawn sum- 
mer's day would this man talk to you in low, equable, but 
clear and musical, tones, concerning things human and 
divine : marshaling all history, harmonizing all experi- 
ment, probing the depths of your consciousness, and re- 
vealing visions of glory and of terror to the imagination ; 
but pouring withal such floods of light upon the mind, 
that you might, for a season, like Paul, become blind in 
the very act of conversion. And this he would do, with- 
out so much as one allusion to himself, without a word of 
reflection on others, save when any given act fell natu- 
rally in the way of his discourse, — without one anecdote 
that was not proof and illustration of a previous posi- 
tion ; — gratifying no passion, indulging no caprice, but 
with a calm mastery over your soul, leading you onward 
and onward forever through a thousand windings, yet with 
no pause, to some magnificent point in which, as in a 
focus, all the party-colored rays of his discourse should 
converge in light. In all this he was, in truth, your 
teacher and guide ; but in a little while you might forget 
that he was other than a fellow-student and the compan- 
ion of your way, — so playful was his manner, so simple 
his language, so affectionate the glance of his pleasant 
eye. — There were, indeed, some whom Coleridge tired, 
and some whom he sent asleep. It would occasionally so 
happen, when the abstruser mood was strong upon him, 
and the visitor was narrow and ungenial. I have seen 
him at times when you could not incarnate him, — when 



THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE. 3 

he shook aside your petty questions or doubts, and burst 
with some impatience through the obstacles of common 
conversation. Then, escaped from the flesh, he would 
soar upward into an atmosphere almost too rare to breathe, 
but which seemed proper to him, and there he would float 
at ease. Like enough, what Coleridge then said, his sub- 
tlest listener would not understand as a man understands 
a newspaper ; but, upon such a listener, there would steal 
an influence, and an impression, and a sympathy ; there 
would be a gradual attempering of his body and spirit, 
till his total being vibrated with one pulse alone, and 
thought became merged in contemplation : — 

And so, his senses gradually wrapt 
In a half sleep, he 'd dream of better worlds, 
And dreaming, hear thee still, O singing lark, 
That sangest like an angel in the clouds ! 

But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the gen- 
eral character of Mr. Coleridge's conversation was ab- 
struse or rhapsodical. . . . Mr. Coleridge's conversation 
at all times required attention, because what he said was 
so individual and unexpected. But when he was dealing 
deeply with a question, the demand upon the intellect of 
the hearer was very great ; not so much for any hardness 
of language, for his diction was always simple and easy ; 
nor for the abstruseness of the thoughts, for they gener- 
ally explained, or appeared to explain, themselves ; but 
pre-eminently on account of the seeming remoteness of 
his associations, and the exceeding subtlety of his tran- 
sitional links. ... It happened to him as to Pindar, 
who in modern days has been called a rambling rhapso- 
dist, because the connections of his parts, though never 
arbitrary, are so fine, that the vulgar reader sees them 
not at all. But they are there nevertheless, and may all 
be so distinctly shown, that no one can doubt their ex- 
istence ; and a little study will also prove that the points 
of contact are those which the true genius of lyric verse 



4 CHARACTERISTICS. 

naturally evolved, and that the entire Pindaric ode, in- 
stead of being the loose and lawless outburst which so 
many have fancied, is, without any exception, the most 
artificial and highly-wrought composition which Time has 
spared to us from the wreck of the Greek Muse. So I 
can well remember occasions, in which, after listening to 
Mr. Coleridge for several delightful hours, I have gone 
away with divers splendid masses of reasoning in my 
head, the separate beauty and coherency of which I 
deeply felt ; but how they had produced, or how they 
bore upon each other, I could not then perceive. In 
such cases I have mused sometimes even for days after- 
ward upon the words, till at length, spontaneously as it 
seemed, " the fire would kindle," and the association 
which had escaped my utmost efforts of comprehension 
before, flashed itself all at once upon my mind with the 
clearness of noonday light. 

Mary Cowden Clarke. It was in the summer of 
182 1 that I first met Samuel Taylor Coleridge. It was 
on the East Cliff at Ramsgate. He was contemplating 
the sea under its most attractive aspect : in a dazzling 
sun, with sailing clouds that drew their purple shadows 
over its bright green floor, and a merry breeze of suffi- 
cient prevalence to emboss each wave with a silvery foam. 
... As he had no companion, I desired to pay my re- 
spects to one of the most extraordinary — and, indeed, 
in his department of genius, the most extraordinary — 
man of his age. And being possessed of a talisman for 
securing his consideration, I introduced myself as a friend 
and admirer of Charles Lamb. The pass-word was suffi- 
cient, and I found him immediately talking to me in the 
bland and frank tones of a standing acquaintance. A 
poor girl had that morning thrown herself from the pier- 
head in a pang of despair, from having been betrayed 
by a villain. He alluded to the event, and went on to 
denounce the morality of the age that will hound from 



THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE. 5 

the community the reputed weaker subject, and continue 
to receive him who has wronged her. He agreed with 
me, that that question wil] never be adjusted but by the 
women themselves. Justice will continue in abeyance so 
long as they visit with severity the errors of their own 
sex and tolerate those of ours. He then diverged to the 
great mysteries of life and death, and branched away to 
the sublime question — the immortality of the soul. 
Here he spread the sail-broad vans of his wonderful im- 
agination, and soared away with an eagle-flight, and with 
an eagle eye, too, compassing the effulgence of his great 
argument, ever and anon stooping within my own spar- 
row's range, and then glancing away again, and careering 
through the trackless fields of ethereal metaphysics. And 
this he continued for an hour and a half, never pausing 
for an instant except to catch his breath (which, in the 
heat of his teeming mind, he did like a school-boy re- 
peating by rote his task,) and gave utterance to some of 
the grandest thoughts I ever heard from the mouth of 
man. His ideas, embodied in words of purest eloquence, 
flew about my ears like drifts of snow. He was like a 
cataract filling and rushing over my penny-phial capacity. 
I would only gasp, and bow my head in acknowledgment. 
He required from me nothing more than the simple rec- 
ognition of his discourse ; and so he went on like a 
steam-engine — I keeping the machine oiled with my 
looks of pleasure, while he supplied the fuel : and that 
upon the same theme, too, would have lasted till now. 
What would I have given for a short-hand report of that 
speech ! And such was the habit of this wonderful man. 
Like the old peripatetic philosophers, he walked about, 
prodigally scattering wisdom, and leaving it to the winds 
of chance to waft the seeds into a genial soil. — My first 
suspicion of his being in Ramsgate had arisen from my 
mother observing that she had heard an elderly gentle- 
man in the public library, who looked like a dissenting 



6 CHARACTERISTICS. 

minister, talking as she never heard man talk. Like his 
own Ancient Mariner, when he had once fixed your eye 
he held you spell-bound, and you were constrained to 
listen to his tale ; you must have been more powerful 
than he to have broken the charm ; and I know no man 
worthy to do that. He did, indeed, answer to my con- 
ception of a man of genius, for his mind flowed on " like 
the Pontick sea," that " ne'er feels retiring ebb." It was 
always ready for action ; like the hare, it slept with its 
eyes open. He would at any given moment range from 
the subtlest and most abstruse question in metaphysics 
to the architectural beauty in contrivance of a flower of 
the fields; and the gorgeousness of his imagery would 
increase, and dilate, and flash forth such coruscations of 
similes and startling theories that one was in a perpetual 
aurora borealis of fancy. As Hazlitt once said of him, 
" He would talk on forever, and you wished him to talk 
on forever. His thoughts never seemed to come with 
labor or effort, but as if borne on the gusts of genius, 
and as if the wings of his imagination lifted him off his 
feet." This is truly as poetically described. He would 
not only illustrate a theory or an argument with a sus- 
tained and superb figure, but in pursuing the current of 
his thought he would bubble up with a sparkle of fancy 
so fleet and brilliant that the attention, though startled 
and arrested, was not broken. He would throw these 
into the stream of his argument, as waifs and strays. 
Notwithstanding his wealth of language and prodigious 
power in amplification, no one, I think, (unless it were 
Shakespeare or Bacon,) possessed with himself equal 
power of condensation. He would frequently comprise 
the elements of a noble theorem in two or three words ; 
and like the genial offspring of a poet's brain, it always 
came forth in a golden halo. I remember once, in dis- 
coursing upon the architecture of the Middle Ages, he 
reduced the Gothic structure into a magnificent abstrac- 



THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE. J 

tion — and in two words. " A Gothic cathedral," he said, 
" is like a petrified religion." 

Thomas Carlyle. Coleridge sat on the brow of High- 
gate Hill, in those years, looking down on London and 
its smoke-tumult, like a sage escaped from the inanity of 
life's battles ; attracting towards him the thoughts of in- 
numerable brave souls still engaged there. ... A sub- 
lime man ; who, alone in those dark days, had saved his 
crown of spiritual manhood ; escaping from the black 
materialisms, and revolutionary deluges, with " God, 
Freedom, Immortality" still his: a king of men. The 
practical intellects of the world did not much heed him, 
or carelessly reckoned him a metaphysical dreamer ; but 
to the rising spirits of the young generation he had this 
dusky sublime character ; and sat there as a kind of 
Magus, girt in mystery and enigma ; his Dodona oak 
grove (Mr. Gillman's house at Highgate) whispering 
strange things, uncertain whether oracles or jargon. . . . 
Here for hours would Coleridge talk, concerning all con- 
ceivable or inconceivable things ; and liked nothing bet- 
ter than to have an intelligent, or failing that, even a 
silent and patient human listener. He distinguished him- 
self to all that ever heard him as at least the most sur- 
prising talker extant in this world, and to some small 
minority, by no means at all, as the most excellent. — The 
good man, he was now getting old, towards sixty, perhaps ; 
and gave you the idea of a life that had been full of suf- 
ferings ; a life heavy-laden, half-vanquished, still swim- 
ming painfully in seas of manifold physical and other 
bewilderment. Brow and head were round, and of mas- 
sive weight, but the face was flabby and irresolute ; ex- 
pressive of weakness under possibility of strength. He 
hung loosely on his limbs, with knees bent, and stooping 
attitude ; in walking, he rather shuffled than decisively 
stept ; and a lady once remarked, he never could fix 
which side of the garden walk would suit him best, but 



8 CHARACTERISTICS. 

continually shifted, in corkscrew fashion, and kept trying 
both. A heavy-laden, half-aspiring, and surely much suf- 
fering man. His voice, naturally soft and good, had 
contracted itself into a plaintive snuffle and singsong ; he 
spoke as if preaching, — you would have said, preaching 
earnestly and also hopelessly the weightiest things. I 
still recollect his "object" and "subject," terms of con- 
tinual recurrence in the Kantean province ; and how he 
sung and snuffled them into " om-m-mject," and " sum- 
m-mject," with a kind of a solemn shake or quaver, as he 
rolled along. No talk in his century, or in any other, 
could be more surprising. ..." Our interview [said 
Sterling in his record of his first interview with Coleridge] 
lasted for three hours, during which he talked two hours 
and three quarters/' Nothing could be more copious 
than his talk ; and furthermore, it was always virtually 
or literally, of the nature of a monologue ; suffering no 
interruption, however reverent ; hastily putting aside all 
foreign additions, annotations, or most ingenuous desires 
for elucidation, as well-meant superfluities which would 
never do. Besides, it was talk not flowing anywhither 
like a river, but spreading everywhither in inextricable 
currents and regurgitations like a lake or sea ; terribly 
deficient in definite goal and aim, nay often in logical 
intelligibility ; what you were to believe or do, or any 
earthly or heavenly thing, obstinately refusing to appear 
from it. So that, most times, you felt logically lost; 
swamped near to drowning in this tide of ingenious voca- 
bles, spreading out boundless as if to submerge the 
world. ... I have heard Coleridge talk, with eager 
musical energy, two stricken hours, his face radiant and 
moist, and communicate no meaning whatsoever to any 
individual of his hearers, — certain of whom, I for one, 
still kept eagerly listening in hope ; the most had long 
before given up, and formed (if the room were large 
enough) secondary humming groups of their own. He 



THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE. 9 

began any where : you put some question to him, made 
some suggestive observation ; instead of answering this, 
or decidedly setting out towards answering it, he would 
accumulate formidable apparatus, logical swim-bladders, 
transcendental life-preservers, and other precautionary 
and vehiculatory gear, for setting out ; perhaps did at last 
get under way, — but was swiftly solicited, turned aside 
by the glance of some radiant new game on this hand or 
that, into new courses ; and ever into new ; and before 
long into all the universe, where it was uncertain what 
game you would catch, or whether any. His talk, alas, 
was distinguished, like himself, by irresolution : it dis- 
liked to be troubled with conditions, abstinences, definite 
fulfillments ; — loved to wander at its own sweet will, and 
make its auditor and his claims and humble wishes a mere 
passive bucket for itself. He had knowledge about many 
things and topics, much curious reading; but generally 
all topics led him, after a pass or two, into the high seas 
of theosophic philosophy, the hazy infinitude of Kantean 
transcendentalism, with its " sum-m-mjects " and " om- 
m-mjects." Sad enough ; for with such indolent impa- 
tience of the claims and ignorances of others, he had not 
the least talent for explaining this or any thing unknown 
to them ; and you swam and fluttered in the mistiest wide 
unintelligible deluge of things, for the most part, in a 
rather profitless, uncomfortable manner. Glorious islets, 
too, I have seen rise out of the haze • but they were few, 
and soon swallowed in the general element again. Balmy, 
sunny islets, islets of the blest and the intelligible ; on 
which occasion those secondary humming groups would 
all cease humming, and hang breathless upon the elo- 
quent words ; till once your islet got wrapped in the mist 
again, and they could recommence humming. Eloquent 
artistically expressive words you always had ; piercing 
radiances of a most subtle insight came at intervals ; 
tones of noble, pious sympathy, recognizable as pious, 



10 CHARACTERISTICS. 

though strangely colored, were never wanting long : but 
in general you could not call this aimless, cloud-capt ? 
cloud-based, lawlessly meandering human discourse of 
reason by the name of " excellent talk," but only of " sur- 
prising ; " and were reminded bitterly of Hazlitt's account 
of it : " Excellent talker, very, — if you let him start from 
no premises and come to no conclusion." Coleridge was 
not without what talkers call wit, and there were touches 
of prickly sarcasm in him, contemptuous enough of the 
world and its idols and popular dignitaries ; he had traits 
even of poetic humor ; but in general he seemed deficient 
in laughter ; or indeed in sympathy for concrete human 
things, either on the sunny or on the stormy side. One 
right peal of concrete laughter at some convicted flesh- 
and-blood absurdity, one burst of noble indignation at 
some injustice or depravity, rubbing elbows with us on 
this solid earth, how strange would it have been in that 
Kantean haze-world, and how infinitely cheering amid its 
vacant air-castles and dim-melting ghosts and shadows ! 
None such ever came. His life had been an abstract 
thinking and dreaming, idealistic, passed amid the ghosts 
of defunct bodies and of unborn ones. The moaning 
sing-song of that theosophico-metaphysical monotony left 
on you, at last, a very dreary feeling. 

Lamb. I dined yesterday in Parnassus, with Words- 
worth, Coleridge, Rogers, and Tom Moore — half the 
poetry of England constellated and clustered in Glouces- 
ter Place ! It was a delightful evening ! Coleridge was 
in his finest vein of talk — had all the talk ; and let 'em 
talk as they will of the envy of poets, I am sure not one 
there but was content to be nothing but a listener. 
The Muses were dumb while Apollo lectured. 

Leigh Hunt. I heard him one day, under the grove 
at Highgate, repeat one of his melodious lamentations, 
as he walked up and down, his voice undulating in a 
stream of music, and his regrets of youth sparkling with 



THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE. II 

visions ever young. . . . On the same occasion he built 
up a metaphor out of a flower, in a style surpassing the 
famous passage in Milton ; deducing it from its root in 
religious mystery, and carrying it up into the bright, con- 
summate flower, "The bridal chamber of reproductive- 
ness." Of all " the Muses' mysteries," he was as great 
a high priest as Spenser • and Spenser himself might 
have gone to Highgate to hear him talk, and thank him 
for his Ancient Mariner. . . . He recited his Kubla 
Khan, one morning to Byron, in his lordship's house in 
Piccadilly, when I happened to be in another room. I 
remembered the others coming away from him, highly 
struck with his poem, and saying how wonderfully he 
talked. This was the impression of every body who 
heard him. 

C. R. Leslie. Of this extraordinary man it might be 
said, as truly as of Burke, that " his stream of mind was 
perpetual." His eloquence threw a new and beautiful 
light on most subjects, and when he was beyond my com- 
prehension, the melody of his voice, and the impressive- 
ness of his manner, held me a willing listener, and I was 
flattered at being supposed capable of understanding 
him. Indeed, men far advanced beyond myself in edu- 
cation might have felt as children in his presence. 

Julius Charles Hare. It is to be regretted that 
John Sterling did not preserve an account of Coleridge's 
conversations with him ; for he was capable of represent- 
ing their depth, their ever varying lines, their sparkling 
lights, their oceanic ebb and flow; of which his published 
Table-talk hardly gives the slightest conception. Unfor- 
tunately Sterling merely took notes of his first interview 
with Coleridge ; but these are the only record I have 
seen which enables one at all to apprehend how his won- 
derful combination of philosophical and poetical powers 
manifested themselves in his discourse. 

John Sterling. Mr. Coieridge happened to lay his 



12 CHARACTERISTICS. 

hand upon a little old engraving of Luther with four Ger- 
man verses above it. He said, " How much better this 
is than many of the butcher-like portraits of Luther, 
which we commonly see ! He is of all men the one whom 
I especially love and admire." Pointing to the first 
words of the German verses, he explained them, " Luther, 
the dear hero." " It is singular," he said, " how all men 
have agreed in assigning to Luther the heroic character ; 
and indeed it is certainly most just. Luther, however 
wrong in some of his opinions, was always right in de- 
sign and spirit. In translating his ideas into conceptions, 
he always understood something higher and more univer- 
sal than he had the means of expressing. He did not 
bestow too much attention on one part of man's nature 
to the exclusion of the others ; but gave its due place to 
each, — the intellectual, the practical, and so forth. He 
is great, even where he is wrong." Some one mentioned 
Calvin. He said, " Calvin was undoubtedly a man of 
talent ; I have a great respect for him ; he had a very 
logical intellect; but he wanted Luther's powers." He 
then began to speak of landscape gardening, in conse- 
quence of some remark about the beautiful view behind 
the house in which he resided. " We have gone too far 
in destroying the old style of gardens and parks. There 
was a great deal of comfort in the thick hedges, which 
always gave you a sheltered walk during winter. There 
is certainly a propriety in the .gradual passing away of 
the works of man in the neighborhood of a home. The 
great thing is to discover whether the scenery is such that 
the country seems to belong to man, or man to the coun- 
try. Now among the lakes of Westmoreland man evi- 
dently belongs to the country: the very cottages seem 
merely to rise out of, and to be growths of, the rock. But 
the case is different in a country where every thing speaks 
of man, houses, corn-fields, cattle. There your improve- 
ments ought to be in conformity with the character of the 



THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE. 1 3 

place. Man is so in love with intelligence, that where he 
is not intelligent enough to discover it, he will impress it. 
Some of the finest views about here (Highgate) are only 
to be seen from among the most wretched habitations. 
Luther said truly : ' How different is a rich country from a 
happy country ! A rich country is always an unhappy, 
miserable, degraded country.' " — He then went into a 
long exposition of the evils of commerce and manufac- 
tures ; the argument of which, I think, is to be found in 
one of the Lay Sermons. In the course of it he took 
occasion to say that the Legislature is defective. "I 
don't mean any thing about the nonsense of universal 
suffrage ; but the land proprietors have too great a pro- 
portion of power. Land is something fixed and tangible ; 
if one man have more of it, another must have less. But 
this other kind of wealth, which is founded in the Na- 
tional Debt, and so forth, — one man's having a million 
of it does not prevent another man's getting two millions 
of it ; nay, it rather makes it more probable that he will 
do so. Thirty or forty years ago it would have been a 
disgrace to a merchant to be seen in the Stock Exchange. 
Now it is thought nothing of. There are only two rem- 
edies for the evil of our excessive increasing population. 
We have not virtue enough for the one, which is a plan 
of general and continued emigrations, in which the peo- 
ple would be perpetually going forth, headed by the priest 
and the noble. In every parish a certain portion of every 
family ought to live under the knowledge that at a certain 
age they were to emigrate. The other remedy is a per- 
fectly free trade in corn • but this would only do for a 
time. More rich men are springing up in the country 
than the country can support : the Regent's Park is 
covered as it were with an enchanted city." — " The di- 
vision of labor has proceeded so far, even in literature, 
that people do not think for themselves ; their review 
thinks for them." — He said to a person in the com- 



14 CHARACTERISTICS. 

pany : " Your friend Mr. was here some time ago. 

He is evidently a man of great talent. We had a long 
dispute together about laughter. Mr. was main- 
taining that notion of Hobbes', that laughter arises from 
contempt. My theory was, that it always springs from 
the sudden experience of a pleasure, for which the nerves 
are not sufficiently prepared, and that laughter is the lit- 
tle convulsion by which nature gets rid of the struggle." — 
The population of Highgate, and the number of churches 
and chapels in it, happened to be mentioned, when Cole- 
ridge said : " There never was such a mistake as the 
government has committed in letting the population out- 
strip the churches to such an extent. They forgot that 
religion, even in its exterior forms, is the centre of grav- 
ity. Christendom is so obviously superior to all the rest 
of the world in every thing, — science, civilization, power, 
— that it is impossible to doubt of the mere external 
advantages of religion." But it was said how much of 
Christianity is there in France ! " Why," replied Cole- 
ridge, " there are a great many queer Christians even here ; 
but still religion exists as a power in the country. Lon- 
don has a great weight after all among mankind. People 
perhaps are not themselves religious ; but they give their 
half-guineas, and they are civil. Christianity brings im- 
mense advantages to a savage. It is an evident prefer- 
ment for him. The missionaries have done a great deal 
for us in clearing up our notions about savage nations. 
What an immense deal of harm Captain Cook's Voyages 
did in that way ! Sailors, after being a long time at sea, 
found a fertile island, and a people of lax morals, which 
were just the things they wanted ; and of course there 
never were such dear, good, kind, amiable people. We 
know now that they were more detestably licentious than 
we could have imagined. And then the romance of the 
Pelew Islanders ! There scarcely ever existed such a 
set of blood-thirsty barbarians. Savages have a notion 



THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE. 1 5 

of higher powers than their own all around them ; but 
that is a part of superstition, not religion. The person- 
ality of the Deity is the great thing. The ancients were 
Spinozists : they could not help seeing an energy in na- 
ture. This was the anima mundi sine centro of the phi- 
losophers. The people, of course, changed it into all the 
forms that their imagination could supply. The religion 
of the philosophers was Pantheism, that of the people 
Polytheism. They knew nothing of a creative power : 
at first there was Chaos and Night ; and what produced 
the universe they could not tell. The gods were merely 
the first birth of Chaos. This is very evident also in the 
notion of the Stoics, that after ten thousand years the 
gods required to be formed again. Even Plato, who 
alone of them all had any idea of God, says that it is very 
hard to discover, and impossible to communicate it. And 
I have no doubt that the first great apostasy, the building 
of the Tower of Babel, consisted in erecting a temple to 
the heavens, to the universe. The first sovereigns of all 
countries were priests, and after them warriors. This is 
clear from the Northern traditions of Odin, the Sagas, 
and so forth. When the families of the priests inter- 
married with the children of the more ignorant people, 
their offspring applied their superior intelligence and 
knowledge to the purposes of conquest ; hence the great 
conquests recorded of old. We never hear of such con- 
quests by savage nations when they are 'not directed by 
the wisdom of a priesthood." — Mr. Coleridge is not tall, 
and rather stout : his features, though not regular, are by 
no means disagreeable ; the hair quite gray • the eye and 
forehead very fine. His appearance is rather old-fash- 
ioned ; and he looks as if he belonged not so much to 
this, or to any age, as to history. His manner and ad- 
dress struck me as being rather formally courteous. He 
always speaks in the tone and in the gesture of common 
conversation, and laughs a good deal, but gently. His 



1 6 CHARACTERISTICS. 

emphasis, though not declamatory, is placed with remark- 
able propriety. He speaks perhaps rather slowly, but 
never stops, and seldom ever hesitates. There is the 
strongest appearance of conviction, without any violence 
in his manner. His language is sometimes harsh, some- 
times careless, often quaint, almost always, I think, drawn 
from the fresh delicious fountains of our elder eloquence. 
I have no doubt that the diction of much that I have re- 
ported is different from Coleridge's, and always, of course, 
vastly inferior. I have treasured up as many of his 
phrases as I could ; they will easily be recognized. On 
one occasion he quoted a line of his own poetry, saying, 
" If I may quote a verse of mine written when I was a 
very young man. It was something to this effect : ' They 
kill too slow for men to call it murder.' " He happened 
to mention several books in the course of his remarks ; 
and he always seemed inclined to mention them good- 
naturedly. — I was in his company about three hours ; 
and of that time he spoke during two and three quarters. 
It would have been delightful to listen as attentively, and 
certainly easy for him to speak just as well for the next 
forty-eight hours. On the whole his conversation, or 
rather monologue, is by far the most interesting I ever 
heard or heard of. Dr. Johnson's talk, with which it is 
obvious to compare it, seems to me immeasurably infe- 
rior. It is better balanced and scrubbed, and more pon- 
derous with epithets ; but the spirit and flavor and fra- 
grance, the knowledge and the genius are all wanting. 
The one is a house of brick, the other a quarry of jasper. 
It is painful to observe in Coleridge that, with all the 
kindness and glorious far-seeing intelligence of his eye, 
there is a glare in it, a light half unearthly, half morbid. 
It is the glittering eye of the Ancient Mariner. . His 
cheek too shows a flush of over-excitement, the red of a 
storm-cloud at sunset. When he dies, another, and one 
of the greatest of their race, will rejoin the few Immor- 



THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE. I J 

tals, the ill-understood and ill-requited, who have walked 
this earth. 

Professor Wilson. If there be any man of great and 
original genius alive at this moment, in Europe, it is 
S. T. Coleridge. Nothing can surpass the melodious 
richness of words, which he heaps around his images ; 
images that are not glaring in themselves, but which are 
always affecting to the verge of tears, because they have 
all been formed and nourished in the recesses of one of 
the most deeply musing spirits that ever breathed forth 
its inspiration, in the majestic language of England. . . . 
Let the dullest clod that ever vegetated, provided only he 
be alive and hear, be shut up in a room with Coleridge, 
or in a wood, and be subjected for a few minutes to the 
ethereal influence of that wonderful man's monologue, 
and he will begin to believe himself a Poet. The barren 
wilderness may not blossom like the rose, but it will 
seem, or rather feel to do so, under the lustre of an im- 
agination exhaustless as the sun. ... It is easy to talk 
— not very difficult to speechify — hard to speak ; but to 
" discourse " is a gift rarely bestowed by Heaven on mor- 
tal man. Coleridge has it in perfection. While he is 
discoursing the world loses all its commonplaces, and you 
and your wife imagine yourself Adam and Eve listening 
to the affable Archangel Raphael in the Garden of Eden. 
You would no more dream of wishing him to be mute for 
a while, than you would a river that "imposes silence 
with a stilly sound." Whether you understood two con- 
secutive sentences, we shall not stop too curiously to in- 
quire ; but you do something better, you feel the whole 
just like any other divine music. And 't is your own fault 
if you do not 

" A wiser and a better man arise to-morrow's morn." 

. . . Nor are we now using any exaggeration ; for if you 
will but think how unutterably dull are all the ordinary 



1 8 CHARACTERISTICS. 

sayings and doings of this life, spent as it is with ordinary 
people, you may imagine how in sweet delirium you may 
be robbed of yourself by a seraphic tongue that has fed 
since first it lisped on " honey-dew," and by lips that 
have " breathed the air of Paradise," and learned a se- 
raphic language, which, all the while that it is English, it 
is as grand as Greek and as soft as Italian. We only 
know this, that Coleridge is the alchemist that in his cru- 
cible melts down hours to moments — and lo ! diamonds 
sprinkled on a plate of gold. 

Dr. Dibdin. I shall never forget the effect his con- 
versation made upon me at the first meeting, at a dinner- 
party. It struck me as something not only quite out of 
the ordinary course of things, but an intellectual exhibi- 
tion altogether matchless. The viands were unusually 
costly, and the banquet was at once rich and varied ; but 
there seemed to be no dish like Coleridge's conversation 
to feed upon — and no information so instructive, as his 
own. The orator rolled himself up as it were in his chair, 
and gave the most unrestrained indulgence to his speech ; 
and how fraught with acuteness and originality was that 
speech, and in what copious and eloquent periods did it 
flow ! The audience seemed to be wrapped in wonder and 
delight, as one conversation, more profound, or clothed 
in more forcible language than another, fell from his 
tongue. He spoke nearly for two hours with unhesitating 
and uninterrupted fluency. 

Talfourd. Instead, like Wordsworth, of seeking the 
sources of sublimity and beauty in the simplest elements 
of humanity, he ranges through all history and science, 
investigating all that has really existed, and all that has 
had foundation only in the wildest and strangest minds, 
combining, condensing, developing, and multiplying the 
rich products of his research with marvelous facility and 
skill ; now pondering fondly over some piece of exquisite 
loveliness, brought from an unknown recess, now tracing 



THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE. 19 

out the hidden germ of the eldest and most barbaric the- 
ories, and now calling fantastic spirits from the vasty 
deep, where they have slept since the dawn of reason. 
The term " myriad-minded," which he has happily ap- 
plied to Shakespeare, is truly descriptive of himself. . . . 
There is nothing more wonderful than the facile majesty 
of his images, or rather of his world of imagery, which, 
whether in his poetry or his prose, start up before us self- 
raised, and all perfect, like the palace of Aladdin. He 
ascends to the sublimest truths by a winding track of 
sparkling glory, which can only be described in his own 

language : 

" The spirit's ladder 
That from the gross and visible world of dust, 
Even to the starry world, with thousand rounds 
Builds itself up ; on which the unseen powers J 
Move up and down on heavenly ministries — 
The circles in the circles, that approach 
The central sun from every narrowing orbit." 

. . . The riches of his mind were developed, not in writ- 
ing, but in his speech — conversation I can scarcely call 
it — which no one who once heard can ever forget. Un- 
able to work in solitude, he sought the gentle stimulus of 
social admiration, and under its influence poured forth, 
without stint, the marvelous resources of a mind rich in 
the spoils of time — richer — richer far in its own glorious 
imagination and delicate fancy ! There was a noble prod- 
igality in these outpourings ; & generous disdain of self ; 
an earnest desire to scatter abroad the seeds of wisdom 
and beauty, to take root wherever they might fall, and 
spring up without bearing his name or impress, which 
might remind the listener of the first days of poetry be- 
fore it became individualized by the press, when the Ho- 
meric rhapsodist wandered through new-born cities and 
scattered hovels, flashing upon the minds of the wonder- 
ing audience the bright train of heroic shapes, the series 
of godlike exploits, and sought no record more enduring 



20 CHARACTERISTICS. 

than the fleshly tablets of his hearers' hearts ; no mem- 
ory but that of genial tradition ; when copyright did not 
ascertain the reciter's property, nor marble at once per- 
petuate and shed chilliness on his fame ; 

" His bounty was as boundless as the sea, 
His love as deep." 

Like the ocean, in all its variety of gentle moods, his 
discourse perpetually ebbed and flowed — nothing in it 
angular, nothing of set purpose, but now trembling as the 
voice of divine philosophy, " not harsh nor crabbed, as 
dull fools suppose, but musical as is Apollo's lute," was 
wafted over the summer wave ; now glistening, in long 
line of light over some obscure subject, like the path of 
moonlight on the black-water ; and, if ever receding from 
the shore, driven by some sudden gust of inspiration, 
disclosing the treasures of the deep, like the rich strond 
in Spenser, " far-sunken in their sunless treasuries," to 
be covered anon by the foam of the same immortal tide. 
The benignity of his manner befitted the beauty of his 
disquisitions ; his voice rose from the gentlest pitch of 
conversation to the height of impassioned eloquence 
without effort, as his language expanded from some com- 
mon topic of the day to the loftiest abstractions ; as- 
cending to the highest truths which the naked eye could 
discern, and suggesting starry regions beyond which his 
own telescopic gaze might possibly decipher. If his en- 
tranced hearers often were unable to perceive the bear- 
ings of his argument — too mighty for any grasp but his 
own, and sometimes reaching beyond his own — they un- 
derstood "a beauty in the words, if not the words ;" and 
a wisdom and piety in the illustrations, even when unable 
to connect them with the idea which he desired to illus- 
trate. If an entire scheme of moral philosophy was 
never developed by him either in speaking or writing, all 
the parts were great : vast biblical knowledge, though 



THE CONVERSATION OF COLERIDGE. 21 

sometimes eddying in splendid conjecture, was always 
employed with pious reverence ; the morality suggested 
was at once elevated and genial ; the charity hoped all 
things ; and the mighty imaginative reasoner seemed 
almost to realize the condition suggested by the great 
Apostle, " that he understood all mysteries and all 
knowledge, and spake with the tongues both of men and 
angels." 

Sir Humphry Davy. During his stay in London I 
saw him seldomer than usual ; when I did see him, it was 
generally in the midst of large companies, where he is 
the image of power and activity. His eloquence is un- 
impaired ; perhaps it is softer and stronger. His will is 
less than ever commensurate with his ability. Brilliant 
images of greatness float upon his mind, like images of 
the morning clouds on the waters. Their forms are 
changed by the motion of the waves, they are agitated by 
every breeze, and modified by every sunbeam. 

John Foster. Prince of magicians, Coleridge ; whose 
mind, too, is clearly more original and illimitable than 
Hall's. Coleridge is indeed sometimes less perspicuous 
and impressive by the distance at which his mental op- 
erations are carried on. Hall works his enginery close 
by you, so as to endanger your being caught and torn by 
some of the wheels ; just as one has felt sometimes when 
environed by the noise and gigantic movements of a great 
mill. . . . The eloquent Coleridge sometimes retires 
into a sublime mysticism of thought ; he robes himself 
in moonlight, and moves among images of which we can- 
not be assured for a while whether they are substantial 
forms of sense or fantastic visions. . . . [His are] the 
most extraordinary faculties I have ever yet seen resident 
in a form of flesh and blood. 

Rogers. Wordsworth and myself had walked to High- 
gate to call on Coleridge, when he was living at Gillman's. 
We sat with him two hoars, he talking the whole time 



22 CHARACTERISTICS. 

without intermission. When we left the house, we walked 
for some time without speaking. " What a wonderful 
man he is ! " exclaimed Wordsworth. " Wonderful, in- 
deed," said I. " What depth of thought, what richness 
of expression ! " continued Wordsworth. " There 's noth- 
ing like him that ever I heard," rejoined I, — another 
pause. " Pray," inquired Wordsworth, " did you pre- 
cisely understand what he said about the Kantean phi- 
losophy ? " " Not precisely." " Or about the plurality of 
worlds ? " "I can't say I did. In fact, if the truth must 
out, I did not understand a syllable from one end of his 
monologue to the other." " No more," said Wordsworth, 
"did I." 



II. 

SARAH SIDDONS. 

It will always be interesting to read of Mrs. Siddons, 
and of the mighty influence she exerted over multitudes 
of her contemporaries. Great and small vied in their 
admiration of her, and could not say enough in praise of 
her presence, her genius, and her achievements. From 
the meanest servant about the theatre to the most exalted 
personage in the realm, all London, all England, seemed 
to agree, and all enlightened English-speaking people 
everywhere accepted the verdict, that Sarah Siddons was 
incomparably the greatest of all actresses that had been 
or would be. Crowds gathered wherever and whenever 
she appeared in public. Every body wanted to see her, 
on the stage and off. The cream of London society paid 
obeisance to her, royalty sought her, eminent artists were 
ambitious to paint her, great poets to apostrophize her, 
and the greatest orators to enrich and adorn their orations 
by allusions to her. 

" For my part," said De Quincey, " I shall always re- 
gard my recollections of Mrs. Siddons as those in which 
chiefly I have an advantage over the coming generation ; 
nay, perhaps over all generations ; for many centuries 
may revolve without producing such another transcendent 
creature." 

Professor Wilson, who had personal knowledge of Mrs. 
Siddons, has this famous thing to say of her in Noctes 
Ambrosianae : " Sarah was a glorious creature. Methinks 
I see her now in the sleep-walking scene. — Shepherd. 
As Leddy Macbeth ! Her gran' high straicht-nosed face, 



24 CHARACTERISTICS. 

whiter than ashes ! Fixed een, no like the een o' the 
dead, yet hardly mair like them o' the leevin' ; dim, and 
yet licht wi' an obscure lustre through which the tormented 
sowl like in the chains o' sleep and dreams, wi' a' the 
distraction o' remorse and despair, — and oh! sic an ex- 
panse o' forehead for a warld o' dreadful thochts, aneath 
the braided blackness o' her hair, that had nevertheless 
been put up wi' a steady and nae uncarefu' haun' before 
the troubled leddy had lain doon, for it behooved ane so 
high-born as she, in the middle o' her ruefu' trouble, no 
to neglect what she owed to her stately beauty, and to 
the head that lay on the couch of ane o' Scotland's 
Thanes — noo likewise about to be, during the short 
space o' the passing o' a thunder-cloud, her bluidy and 
usurping king. — North. Whisht — Tickler — whisht — 
no coughing. — Shepherd. Onwards she used to come 

— no Sarah Siddons — but just Leddy Macbeth herseP 

— though through that melancholy masquerade o' pas- 
sion, the spectator aye had a confused glimmerin' appre- 
hension o' the great actress — glidin' wi' the ghostlike 
motion o' nicht - wanderin' unrest, unconscious o' sur- 
roundin' objects, — for oh ! how could the glazed, yet 
gleamin' een, see aught in this material world? — yet, by 
some mysterious power o' instinct, never touchin' ane o' 
the impediments that the furniture o' the auld castle might 
hae imposed to her haunted footsteps, — on she came, 
wring, wringin' her hauns, as if washin' them in the 
cleansin' clews frae the blouts o' blood, — but wae 's me 
for the murderess, out they wad no be, ony mair than the 
stains on the spat o' the floor where some midnicht-slain 
Christian has groaned out his soul aneath the dagger's 
stroke, when the sleepin' hoose heard not the shriek o' 
departing life. — Tickler. North, look at James' face. 
Confound me, under the inspiration of the moment, if it 
is not like John Kemble's ! — Shepherd. Whether a' 
this, sirs, was nature's or not, ye see I dinna ken, because 



SARAH SIDDOXS. 25 

I never beheld ony woman, either gentle or semple, 
walkin' in her sleep after having committed murder. But, 
Lord safe us ! That hollow, broken-hearted voice, ' out, 
damned spot,' was o' itsell aneuch to tell to a' that heard 
it, that crimes done in the flesh during time will needs 
be punished in the spirit during eternity. It was a 
dreadfu' homily you, sirs ; and wha that saw 't would ever 
ask whether tragedy or the stage was moral, purging the 
soul, as she did, wi' pity and wi' terror." 

Young was acting Beverley with her on the Edinburgh 
stage, when she gave the exclamation, " 'T is false, old 
man ! — they had no quarrel — there was no cause for 
quarrel," with such piercing grief that he said his throat 
swelled, and his utterance was choked. He stood unable 
to speak the few words which, as Beverley, he ought to 
have immediately delivered ; the pause lasted long enough 
to make the prompter several times repeat Beverley's 
speech, till Mrs. Siddons. coming up to her fellow-actor, 
put the tips of her fingers on his shoulders, and said, 
in a low voice, " Mr. Young, recollect yourself." 

Fitzgerald mentions even a more remarkable and strik- 
ing instance of this influence which was exhibited during a 
performance of Henry VIII., when she addressed a raw 
supernumerary, who was playing the Surveyor, warning 
him against giving false testimony against his master : — 

" If I know you well, 
You were the Duke's surveyor^ and lost your office 
On the complaints of the tenants. Take good heed 
You charge not in your spleen a noble person." 

Her scorn was so withering, her looks so menacing, that 
the actor came off literally perspiring with terror, and 
protesting that he would not venture again to meet her 
terrible look of severity. Such was her power, amid all 
the hackneyed associations of the side scenes, and it helps 
us to form an idea of what it was over an unsophisticated 
audience. 



26 CHARACTERISTICS. 

It was this wonderful woman's art, says Fitzgerald, in 
his Life of the Kembles, to stamp some remarkable image 
of herself on the recollection,. in great plays, like Corio- 
lanus ; and that fine actor Young, looked back with ad- 
miration and wonder to the figure of her Volumnia, as it 
lingered in his memory. " I remember her," he writes to 
Mr. Campbell, more than forty years after the perform- 
ance, " coming down the stage, in 1789, in the triumphal 
entry of her son, Coriolanus, when her dumb-show drew 
plaudits that shook the building. She came alone, march- 
ing and beating time to the music ; rolling (if that be not 
too strong a term to describe her motion) from side to 
side, swelling with the triumph of her son. Such was 
the intoxication of joy which flashed from her eye, and 
lit up her whole face, that the effect was irresistible. She 
seemed to me to reap all the glory of that procession to 
herself. I could not take my eye from her. Coriolanus, 
banner, and pageant, all went for nothing to me, after she 
had walked to her place." 

When far advanced in life, Mrs. Siddons appeared as 
Arpasia in Tamerlane — her brother, John Kemble, 
taking the part of Bajazet. It is stated that in the last 
act, when by order of the tyrant, her lover Moneses is 
strangled before her face, she worked herself up to such 
a pitch of agony, and gave such terrible reality to the 
few convulsive words she tried to utter, as she sank a 
lifeless heap before her murderer, that the audience for 
a few moments remained in a hush of astonishment, as if 
awe-struck ; they then clamored for the curtain to be 
dropped, and insisting on the manager's appearance, re- 
ceived from him in answer to their vehement inquiries, 
the assurance that Mrs. Siddons was alive, and recover- 
ing from the temporary indisposition that her exertions 
had caused. They were satisfied as regarded her, but 
would not suffer the performance to be resumed. 

Macready, before he was twenty, appeared twice with 



SARAH SIDDONS. 2J 

Mrs. Siddons — then in her fifty-fifth year. He says of 
her in his Reminiscences : " What eulogy can do justice 
to her personations. . . . How can any force of descrip- 
tion imprint on the imagination the sudden but thrilling 
effect of tone or look, of port or gesture, or even of the 
silence so often significative in the development of human 
passion. . . . She stood alone on her height of excel- 
lence. Her acting was perfection, and as I recall it I do 
not wonder, novice as I was, at my perturbation when on 
the stage with her. . . . In no other theatrical artist 
were, I believe, the charms of voice, the graces of per- 
sonal beauty, and the gifts of genius ever so grandly and 
harmoniously combined." 

Godwin delighted to talk of her merits. He was an 
ardent admirer of Garrick, yet he confessed to Campbell 
that he thought Mrs. Siddons possessed finer powers. 

Crabb Robinson bore testimony to her extraordinary 
power, and it is known that he was the young man who 
is described as having burst into loud laughter, in the pit, 
during the most terrible portion of her performance of 
the Fatal Curiosity. He was being forcibly ejected, 
when it was discovered that he was in violent hysterics. 

An accurate division of her tragic characters has been 
made into four classes. First, it is claimed, should be 
placed those of Shakespearian grandeur and dignity, like 
Lady Macbeth ; secondly, those in which a classical dig- 
nity was combined with the modern ideas of emotion, 
as in The Grecian Daughter or Jane Shore ; thirdly, purely 
melodramatic characters, like Mrs. Haller ; and fourthly, 
characters of dignified Shakespearian comedy, like Her- 
mione. In each of these distinct departments one or 
two characters could be named in which she was remark- 
able — a singular and exceptional proof of genius. 

As to her reading, Miss Edgeworth says : " I heard 
Mrs. Siddons read, at her town house, a portion of Henry 
VIII. I was more struck and delighted than I ever was 



28 CHARACTERISTICS. 

with any reading in my life. This is feebly expressing 
what I felt ; I felt that I had never before fully under- 
stood or sufficiently admired Shakespeare, or known the 
full powers of the human voice and the English language. 
Queen Katharine was a character peculiarly suited to her 
time of life and to reading. There was nothing that re- 
quired gesture or vehemence incompatible with the sitting 
attitude. The composure and dignity, and the sort of 
suppressed feeling, and touches, not bursts of tenderness, 
of matronly, not youthful tenderness, were all favorable 
to the general effect. I quite forgot to applaud — I 
thought she was what she aprjeared." 

Miss Wynn, who heard her read Macbeth, said that she 
never knew what the play was till then. Mrs. Siddons 
contrived, in the sleep-walking scene, to discharge all ex- 
pression from her fine eyes, leaving only a glassy stare. 

Washington Irving, during his first visit to London, in 
1805, saw Mrs. Siddons, and thus speaks of her in a let- 
ter to his brother : " Were I to indulge without reserve in 
my praises of Mrs. Siddons, I am afraid you would think 
them hyperbolical. What a wonderful woman ! The very 
first time I saw her perform I was struck with admiration. 
It was in the part of Calista. Her looks, her voice, her 
gestures, delighted me. She penetrated in a moment to 
my heart. She froze and melted it by turns ; a glance 
of her eye, a start, an exclamation, thrilled through my 
whole frame. The more I see her, the more I admire 
her. I hardly breathe while she is on the stage. She 
works on my feelings till I am like a mere child." 

Northcote remarked to Hazlitt that he had seen young 
ladies of quality — Lady Marys and Lady Dorothys — 
peeping into a room where Mrs. Siddons was sitting, with 
all the same timidity and curiosity as if it were some pre- 
ternatural being — he was sure, more than if it had been 
the Queen. Hazlitt said, that of all the women he had 
ever seen or known any thing of, Mrs. Siddons struck 



SARAH SIDDONS. 29 

him as the grandest. She appeared to him " to belong 
to a superior order of beings, to be surrounded with a 
personal awe, like some prophetess of old, or Roman, 
matron, the mother of Coriolanus and the Gracchi. Her 
voice answered to her form, and her expression to both." 
Northcote said if you had not seen Mrs. Siddons you 
could have no idea of her, nor could you convey it to any 
one who had not. She was indeed, he said, like a pre- 
ternatural being descended to the earth. Byron said of 
her in Lady Macbeth, that she was " something above 
nature." 

" I remember," says Mrs. Jameson, " that the first time 
I found myself in the same room with Mrs. Siddons, I 
gazed on her as I should have gazed at one of the Egyp- 
tian pyramids — nay, with a deeper awe, for what is ma- 
terial and physical immensity, compared with moral and 
poetical grandeur ? I was struck with a sensation which 
made my heart pause, and rendered me dumb for some 
minutes; and when I was led into conversation with her, 
my first words came faltering and thick, — which never 
certainly would have been the case in presence of the 
autocratrix of all the Russias. The greatest, the noblest 
in the land approached her with a deference not unmin- 
gled with a shade of embarrassment, while she stood in 
regal guise majestic, with the air of one who bestowed 
and never received honor." 

Tate Wilkinson, the eccentric old stage-manager, would 
say of her, in his wandering, mixed way, — " To be sure, 
Mrs. Siddons was all in all. Her grandeur and dignity 
were indeed wonderful ! and if you ask me what is a 
queen ? I should say Mrs. Siddons ! as I said, where is 
there to be found such another Mrs. Siddons ? Her fine 
figure and majestic mien in Elvira exceeded any thing I 
ever saw." In his Memoirs he says, " Mrs. Siddons, in 
a theatrical lottery, would certainly obtain fifteen prizes 
out of twenty." "Certainly," he says, "where disdain, 



30 CHARACTERISTICS. 

contempt, pride, or indignation, are to be expressed, it 
may safely be affirmed she there stands unrivaled, and is 
herself alone." " I do not mean," he says again, " to in- 
sinuate Mrs. Siddons has not foibles or faults — I can 
only say, if she has, I am not acquainted with them." 

Of " the great queen of all actresses," Byron wrote in 
one of his Journals : " Of actors, Cooke was the most 
natural, Kemble the most supernatural — Kean the me- 
dium between the two. But Mrs. Siddons was worth 
them all put together." She took leave of the stage, he 
said, " to the loss of ages, — for nothing ever was, or can 
be, like her." 

George the Fourth, after conversing with her, said, with 
emphasis, " She is the only real queen." 

Imagine her, if you can, standing as a statue, peerless 
and queenly, in her part of Hermione, in Winter's Tale ! 

u O, royal piece, 
There 's magic in thy majesty." 

It was while she was playing this part, it is related, that 
Mrs. Siddons escaped death from fire, through the mar- 
velous presence of mind of the scene-man. As she was 
standing for the statue, her drapery flitted over the lamps 
that were placed behind the pedestal, and caught fire. 
The scene-man crept on his hands and knees and extin- 
guished the flame, without discovering to her the danger 
she was in, a service for which she rewarded him by ob- 
taining from the king a pardon for his son, a soldier who 
had incurred the death penalty for desertion from the 
army. 

Joanna Baillie was an intimate friend of Mrs. Siddons, 
and wrote expressly for her the part of Jane de Mont- 
fort, in her play of De Montfort. The poet Campbell 
pronounces the following passage an almost perfect pic- 
ture of the great actress : 

" Page. — Madam, there is a lady in your hall, 

Who begs to be admitted to your presence. 



SARAH SIDDONS. 



31 



Lady. — Is it not one of our invited friends ? 

Page. — No ; far unlike to them. It is a stranger. 

Lady. — How looks her countenance ? 

Page. — So queenly, so commanding, and so noble, 

I shrank at first in awe ; but when she smiled 
Methought I could have compassed sea and land 
To do her bidding. 

I^ady. — Is she young or old ? 

Page. — Neither, if right I guess ; but she is fair, 

For Time has laid his hand so gently on her, 

As he too had been awed, 

So stately and so graceful is her form. 

I thought at first her stature was gigantic, 

But, on a near approach, I found in truth 

She scarcely does surpass the middle size. 

Lady. — What is her garb ? 

Page. — I cannot well describe the fashion of it ; 
She is not decked in any gallant trim, 
But seems to me clad in the usual weeds 
Of high habitual state. 

Lady. — Thine eyes deceive thee, boy, 

It is an apparition thou hast seen. 

FreBERG. — It is an apparition he has seen, 
Or Jane de Montfort." 

Campbell speaks of once having gone through the 
Louvre with Mrs. Siddons. " I observed," he says, " almost 
every eye in the hall was fixed upon her and followed 
her ; yet I could perceive that she was not known, as I 
could hear the spectators say, ' Who is she ? is she not an 
English woman ? ' At this time, though in her fifty-ninth 
year, her looks were so noble, that she made you proud 
of English beauty — even in the presence of Grecian 
sculpture." This description will not seem extravagant 
to those who read the letters of Dr. Beattie or Washing- 
ton Irving, recording the impressions made upon them by 
this wonderful woman, when far advanced in life. Dr. 
Johnson, when asked whether he did not think her finer 
on the stage, where she was adorned by art, replied, " On 
the stage art does not adorn her ; nature adorns her there, 
and art glorifies her." 



32 CHARACTERISTICS. 

Davies, a contemporary and an actor, as well as a man 
of letters, said of her: "This actress, like a resistless 
torrent, has borne down all before her. Her merit, which 
is certainly very extensive in tragic characters, seems to 
have swallowed up all remembrance of present and past 
performers." 

Henderson, not long after her first appearance on the 
London stage, pronounced her " an actress who never 
had an equal, nor would ever have a superior." 

James Ballantyne gave her the name of " the Siddons," 
and he was pronounced by Professor Wilson " the best 
theatrical creetic in Embro'." She was also called the 
" Tragic Queen," and the " Queen of Tears." 

De Quincey, who not only often saw Mrs. Siddons upon 
the stage, but met her privately at the house of Hannah 
More, has this among other quotable things to say of 
her : " Amongst the many pleasurable impressions which 
Mrs. Siddons' presence never failed to make, there was 
one which was positively painful and humiliating : it was 
the degradation which it inflicted upon other women. 
One day there was a large dinner-party at Barley Wood. 
Mrs. Siddons was present ; and I remarked to a gentle- 
man who sat next to me — a remark which he heartily 
confirmed — that upon rising to let the ladies leave us, 
Mrs. Siddons, by the mere necessity of her regal deport- 
ment, dwarfed the whole party, and made them look ridic- 
ulous; though Hannah More, and others of the ladies 
present, were otherwise really women of very pleasing 
appearance." 

Harlow, the painter, writing of Mrs. Siddons, said that 
when, in the character of Queen Katharine, she addressed 
Wolsey in the words, " Lord Cardinal, to you I speak," 
her statuesque attitude was the sublimest thing in ancient 
or modern sculpture. 

The Encyclopaedia Britannica pronounces her " the 
greatest actor that ever trod the stage. She took posses- 



SARAH SIDDONS. 33 

sion of the tragic throne, on which, for thirty years she 
reigned without a rival. The public were astonished at 
the vastness of her powers, and tragedy became the fash- 
ion. The symmetry of the great actress's person was 
most captivating. Her features were strongly marked, 
but finely harmonized ; the flexibility of her countenance 
was extraordinary, yielding instantaneously to every 
change of passion ; her voice was plaintive, yet capable 
of firmness and exertion ; her articulation was clear, pen- 
etrating, and distinct \ above all she was completely mis- 
tress of her powers \ and possessed that high judgment 
which enabled her to display all of her other qualifica- 
tions to the greatest advantage. One of Mrs. Siddons' 
highest endowments, if not her very highest, was the 
power of identifying herself with the character which she 
personated. The scenes in which she acted were to her 
far from being a mere mimic show; so powerfully did 
her imagination . conjure up the reality, that the tears 
which she shed w r ere those of bitterness felt at the mo- 
ment. From her frown of proud disdain and scorn, the 
very actors themselves shrank with something like ter- 
ror. Her greatest characters were Katharine in Henry 
VIII. (the most chaste, beautiful, and perfect performance 
that ever drew a tear), and Lady Macbeth, in which she 
manifested a dignity and a sensibility, a power, and a pa- 
thos, never equaled by any female performer." 

It is related, that late one night Mr. Siddons was sit- 
ting by the fire in the family parlor, dozing and smoking, 
when suddenly he was roused, with a start, by hurried 
footsteps, that w r ere flying rather than running down the 
passage. Who could it be? he asked himself, all in a 
maze and a wonder, as he jumped up and rubbed his 
sleep-laden eyes. He had hardly had time to let the 
question go darting through his brain, when the door of 
the room was thrown open quickly, as by a hasty, trem- 
bling hand, and a female figure rushed in. Mr. Siddons 
3 



34 CHARACTERISTICS. 

gazed in speechless astonishment, not unmixed with a 
touch of fear. There before him stood his wife, her fine 
hair disheveled, her dress all in disorder, her face all 
quivering with strong emotion. In bewildered alarm he 
asked her what was the matter, but her only answer was 
to throw herself into his arms, and burst into a torrent 
of tears. He soothed her tenderly, not knowing what to 
think, and gradually she grew calmer. Then her words 
made the mystery plain enough. Instead of going to 
bed, as he had bade her do, she had been sitting up study- 
ing her part as Lady Macbeth ; and the character had so 
completely absorbed her in itself, she had so entirely 
realized the horror of each situation in the play, had seen 
it all so distinctly before her eyes, as if she had been 
there in the body, that a wild, unreasoning terror had 
seized her, and she had rushed away to seek human com- 
panionship. 

The person of Mrs. Siddons, it is said by one familiar 
with her acting, rather courted the regal attire, and her 
beauty became more vivid from the decorations of her 
rank. The commanding height and powerful action of 
her figure, though always feminine, seemed to tower be- 
yond her sex. Her walk has never been attempted by 
any other actress ; and in deliberate dignity was as much 
alone, as the expression of her countenance. All ac- 
counts and pictures of her represent her nose as being 
very prominent. It is on record that while Gainsborough 
was painting that exquisite portrait of her, which is now 
in the South Kensington Gallery, after working in ab- 
sorbed silence for some time, he suddenly exclaimed, 
" D — n it, madam, there is no end to your nose ! " 

Speaking of the play of The Fair Penitent, one of Mrs 
Siddons' admirers said that it was worth sitting out the 
piece for the scene with Horatio alone, and to see " such 
a splendid animal in such a magnificent rage." Davies 
noticed that in the third act she became so affected that 
" her paleness was seen through her rouge." 



SARAH SIDDONS. 35 

" When we have such a being as Mrs. Siddons before 
us in Lady Macbeth," says one who was familiar with her 
acting, "what signifies the order or disorder of the pic- 
ture of a castle behind her, or whether the shadows be 
upwards or downwards on the mouldings of the midnight 
apartment ? It is to the terror of her eye, it is to the ve- 
hement and commanding sweep of her action — it is to 
the perfection of her voice that I am a captive, and I 
must pity the man who, not being the painter of the can- 
vas, is at leisure to inquire how it is executed." 

" The great actress steps upon the scene, and how she 
fills it in a moment ! Mind and majesty wait upon her 
in the air ; her person is lost in the greatness of her per- 
sonal presence ; she dilates with thought, and a stupid 
giantess looks a dwarf beside her." 

Of Mrs. Siddons' Mrs. Haller, one of her admirers 
once told Fanny Kemble that her majestic and imposing 
person, and the commanding character of her beauty, 
militated against her effect in the part. " No man, alive 
or dead," said he, " would have dared to take a liberty 
with her ; wicked she might be, but weak she could not 
be, and when she told the story of her ill-conduct in the 
play, nobody believed her." 

The stupidity of the King in not understanding her 
better, is past comprehension. On one occasion, it is 
stated, his majesty put into her hands a sheet of paper, 
merely subscribed with his name, intended, it may be pre- 
sumed, to afford the opportunity to Mrs. Siddons of pledg- 
ing the royal signature to any provision of a pecuniary 
nature, which might be most agreeable to the actress her- 
self. This paper, with the discretion that was suited to 
the circumstance itself, and which was so characteristic 
of Mrs. Siddons, she delivered into the hands of the 
Queen ; upon whom conduct so delicate and dignified 
was not likely to be lost. 

When asked as to her modes of study, discipline of 



36 CHARACTERISTICS. 

mind, etc., she replied, " When a part is first put before 
me for study, I look it over in a general way, to see if it 
is in nature, and if it is, I am sure it can be played." 

" I cannot but think it a peculiar happiness to Mrs. 
Siddons," says Boaden, in his Memoirs of the great ac- 
tress, " that she seems through life so little to have imi- 
tated what other performers did in the parts she acted. 
I willingly believe this not to have been sufficiency, as 
despising others, or disdaining help ; but from a settled 
conviction, that she could only be great by being truly 
original j and that she ought to deliver her own concep- 
tions of character with absolute indifference by what 
other artists they were either disputed or confirmed." 
Her own idea of a part she conscientiously aimed to 
realize in her acting, and nothing could divert her from 
her purpose. The same integrity marked her professional 
life that controlled her personal conduct. " Neither praise 
nor money," wrote Dr. Johnson to Mrs. Thrale, " the two 
powerful corrupters of mankind, seem to have depraved 
her." 

" Have you ever heard," asked Garrick, in an unpub- 
lished letter to Moody, then at Liverpool, " of a Mrs. 
Siddons, who is strolling about somewhere near you?" 
Four months later, Garrick brought her out at Drury 
Lane; but she did not succeed. She returned to Bath, 
where she was successful. It was at Birmingham, how- 
ever, in the summer of 1776, (then in her twenty-first 
year) that Henderson first saw the future great actress. 
He was immediately struck with her excellence, and de- 
clared that she would never be surpassed. One night at 
Bath, accident is said to have conducted into the boxes of 
the theatre some persons of consummate taste, and of suf- 
ficient consequence to make their opinions heard. A 
mysterious smile of derision, it is stated, soon announced 
to the votaries of fashion, that a great genius was wasting 
unequaled talents, without either patronage or praise, 



SARAH SIDDOXS. 37 

among people who call themselves enlightened. Old Mr. 
Sheridan distinguished himself early in the list of admir- 
ers, and asserted that Mrs. Siddons was more pathetic 
even than Mrs. Cibber. The prophecy of Henderson, 
too, was remembered, and the tide of popularity soon 
flowed in a stream, which was never destined to ebb. A 
few eddies from occasional obstructions, adds the enthu- 
siastic Boaden, to carry on the figure, hardly merit to be 
formally remembered. 

Her second appearance at Drury Lane, in Southern's 
tragedy of Isabella, is thus referred to in her autobio- 
graphical Memoranda : " On the .evening of the second 
rehearsal I was seized with a nervous hoarseness, which 
made me extremely wretched ; for I dreaded being obliged 
to defer my appearance, longing, as I most earnestly did, 
at least to know the worst. I went to bed, therefore, in a 
state of dreadful suspense. Awaking the next morn- 
ing, however, though out of restless, unrefreshing sleep, I 
found, upon speaking to my husband, that my voice was 
very much clearer. This, of course, was a great comfort 
to me ; and, moreover, the sun, which had been com- 
pletely obscured for many days, shone brightly through 
my curtains. I hailed it, though tearfully, yet thankfully, 
as a happy omen ; and even now I am not ashamed of 
this (as it may perhaps be called) childish superstition. 
On the morning of the 10th, my voice was, most happily, 
perfectly restored, and again 'the blessed sun shone 
brightly on me.' On this eventful day my father arrived 
to comfort me, and to be a witness of my trial. He ac- 
companied me to my dressing-room at the theatre. There 
he left me ; and I, in one of what I call my desperate 
tranquillities, which usually impress me under terrific cir- 
cumstances, there completed my dress, to the astonish- 
ment of my attendants, without uttering one word, though 
often sighing most profoundly. At length I was called 
to my fiery trial. I found my venerable father behind the 



38 CHARACTERISTICS. 

scenes, little less agitated than myself. The awful con- 
sciousness that one is the sole object of attention to that 
immense space, lined as it were with human intellects 
from top to bottom, and all around, may perhaps be im- 
agined, but can never be described, and by me can never 
be forgotten. Of the general effect of this night's per- 
formance I need not speak ; it has already been publicly 
recorded. I reached my own quiet fireside on retiring 
from the scene of reiterated shouts and plaudits. I was 
half dead ; and my joy and thankfulness were of too 
solemn and overpowering a nature to admit of words, or 
even tears. My father, my husband, and myself, sat 
down to a frugal, neat supper, in a silence uninterrupted, 
except by exclamations of gladness from Mr. Siddons. 
My father enjoyed his refreshments ; but occasionally 
stopped short, and laying down his knife and fork, lifting 
up his venerable face, and throwing back his silver hair, 
gave way to tears of happiness. We soon parted for the 
night ; and I, worn out with continually broken rest and 
laborious exertion, after an hour's retrospection (who can 
conceive the intenseness of that reverie ?) fell into a sweet 
and profound sleep, which lasted to the middle of the 
next day." 

At one of her rehearsals, previous to her night of tri- 
umph at Drury Lane, an incident occurred which, though 
trifling enough, must have afforded her great encourage- 
ment. Her little boy, who was to be her little child in 
the piece, was so affected by her acting that he took the 
whole for reality, and burst into the most passionate flood 
of tears, thinking he was about to lose his mamma. This 
satisfactory proof of effect, it is said, deeply impressed 
the actors and managers, and Sheridan had the story con- 
veyed to friendly newspapers. 

Not long after, she sat for her portrait, as Isabella, to 
the distinguished artist Hamilton. Her immense popu- 
larity, we are told, was now shown, in the general enthu- 



SARAH SIDDONS. 



39 



siasm to see her picture, even when it was scarcely 
finished. Carriages thronged the artist's door ; and, if 
every fine lady who stepped out of them did not actually 
weep before the painting, they had all of them, at least, 
their white handkerchiefs ready for that demonstration of 
their sensibility. 

Notwithstanding all these evidences of her popularity, 
the critics, as usual, were slow to credit her with lasting 
excellence. Russell, the author of the History of Modern 
Europe, published a poem called The Tragic Muse, in 
which he complimented Mrs. Siddons. He was severely 
reproved by the critics for " wasting his verse upon ex- 
cellence that was in its nature fugitive, the meteor of the 
moment." 

In the height of her popularity she was obliged to de- 
cline all invitations to parties, routs, etc., preferring to 
give herself up to study, and to the duties of her family. 
On one occasion, at the house of a Scotch lady of high 
rank, but somewhat eccentric, she was conversing with 
three or four ladies of her acquaintance, " when," she 
says, " incessantly repeated thunderings at the door, and 
the sudden influx of such a throng of people as I had 
never before seen collected in any private house, coun- 
teracted every attempt that I could make for escape. I 
was therefore obliged, in a state of indescribable mortifi- 
cation, to sit quietly down, till I know not what hour in 
the morning ; but for hours before my departure, the room 
I sat in was so painfully crowded, that the people abso- 
lutely stood on the chairs, round the walls, that they 
might look over their neighbors' heads to stare at me ; 
and if it had not been for the benevolent politeness of 
Mr. Erskine, who had been acquainted with my arrange- 
ment (to meet a few friends only), I know not what weak- 
ness I might have been surprised into." 

No actress, we are assured, was ever so gratified by the 
warmth of personal friendships, with attentions from 



40 CHARACTERISTICS. 

persons of consideration, as Mrs. Siddons, and these 
were not by way of patronage, but from a sincere pleas- 
ure in her society, and respect for her character. She 
was to be met at Strawberry Hill, and in such company 
as Louis Philippe, and the Prince Regent. The latter 
often invited her to the Pavilion at Brighton. 

A lady described to Mr. Fitzgerald a little scene which 
happened when she herself was very young, and when 
she had been taken to see " the great Mrs. Siddons." 
The child long after recalled the wonderful eyes, and 
particularly the long, silky eyelashes, which she noticed 
were of extraordinary length, and curled upwards in a 
beautiful curve. . The actress was very good-natured ; 
and on being told that the young girl was obliged to go 
away to the country, and would have no opportunity of 
seeing her, with much good-nature, she at once kindly 
said that the little girl should not be disappointed — that 
she would act for her there and then, and at once pro- 
ceeded to recite from Milton and Shakespeare in her 
finest manner. 

Boaclen was present at the first appearance of Mrs. Sid- 
dons as Jane Shore. He describes the effect of her act- 
ing in that part as truly overpowering, especially at the 
end of the piece. I well remember, he says, (how is it 
possible I should ever forget ?) the sobs, the shrieks, 
among the tender part of her audience ; or those tears, 
which manhood at first struggled to suppress, but at 
length grew proud of indulging. We then, indeed, knew 
all the luxury of grief ; but the nerves of many a gentle 
being gave way before the intensity of such appeals ; and 
fainting fits, long and frequent, alarmed the decorum of 
the house, filled almost to suffocation. 

The mother of Lord Byron, being at the Edinburgh 

Theatre one night, when the character of Isabella was 

-performed by Mrs. Siddons, was so affected by the powers 

of the great actress, that, toward the conclusion of the 



SARAH SIDDONS. 41 

play, she fell into violent fits, and was carried out of the 
theatre, screaming. 

Her success in Ireland was very great, and in Scotland 
also j but her reception there was very different. " I re- 
member," says Campbell, " Mrs. Siddons describing to 
me the scene of her probation on the Edinburgh boards 
with no small humor. The grave attention of my Scottish 
countrymen, and their canny reservation of praise till 
they were sure she deserved it, she said had well-nigh 
worn out her patience. She had been used to speak to 
animated clay ; but she now felt as if she had been speak- 
ing to stones. Successive flashes of her elocution, that 
had always been sure to electrify the South, fell in vain 
on those Northern flints. At last, as I well remember, 
she told me she coiled up her powers to the most em- 
phatic possible utterance of one passage, having previ- 
ously vowed in her heart, that if this could not touch the 
Scotch, she would never again cross the Tweed. When 
it was finished, she paused, and looked to the audience. 
The deep silence was broken only by a single voice ex- 
claiming, 'That's no bad ! ' This ludicrous parsimony of 
praise convulsed the Edinburgh audience with laughter. 
But the laugh was followed by such thunders of applause, 
that amid her stunned and nervous agitation she was not 
without fears of the galleries coming down." 

The good fortune of Mrs. Siddons, we are told, was 
seconded by her prudence ; she launched into no unnec- 
essary expense ; to be herself any where implied sufficient 
consequence. She had genteel lodgings in the Strand ; 
was at the theatre in a few minutes ; and full of the best 
inspiration, a mother's feeling for her family, she prepared 
herself for a life of such exertion as even mocks the toil 
of mere manual art. 

To give some idea of her laborious life, it may be 
stated that during her second season in London she acted 
Isabella seven times ; Mrs. Beverley, seven also ; Belvi- 



42 CHARACTERISTICS. 

dera and Lady Randolph, six times each ; Shakespeare's 
Isabella and Thomson's Sigismunda, five times each ; 
Euphrasia and Constance, four \ Jane Shore and the 
Countess of Salisbury, three ; Zara, in the Mourning 
Bride, two • Calista, one. In one season alone (1784-5) 
she appeared seventy-one times, in as many as seventeen 
different characters. Dr. Franklin was one of her ad- 
miring auditors. 

The expenditure of intellect and passion in her pow- 
erful parts was prodigious. In her personation of Con- 
stance, in King John, one familiar with her acting said 
that he could point out the passages where her vicissi- 
tudes of hurried and deliberate gesture would have made 
you imagine that her very body seemed to think. Her 
elocution varied its tones from the height of vehemence 
to the lowest despondency, with an eagle-like power of 
stooping and soaring, and with the rapidity of thought. 
Miss Kelly told Crabb Robinson that when, as Constance, 
Mrs. Siddons wept over her, her collar was wet with the 
great actress' tears. " The recollection of Mrs. Siddons 
as Constance," says Robinson, "is an enjoyment in itself. 
I remember one scene in particular, where, throwing her- 
self on the ground, she calls herself ' The Queen of Sor- 
row,' and bids Kings come and worship her ! " He saw 
her in 181 1, then an old woman, in her part as Margaret 
of Anjou in the play of The Earl of Warwick. " In the 
last act," he says, "her triumphant joy at the entrance of 
Warwick, whom she had stabbed, was incomparable. 
She laughed convulsively, and staggered off the stage as 
if drunk with delight ; and in every limb showed the tu- 
mult of passion. As an actress she has left me the con- 
viction that there never was and never will be, her equal." 
In 1828 he notes reading Boaden's Life of Mrs. Siddons, 
which recalled " the yet unfaded image of that most mar- 
velous woman, to think of whom is now a greater enjoy- 
ment than to see any other actress." 



SARAH SIDDONS. 43 

Her rich emotional nature was easily aroused, and 
promptly responded to every phase of feeling. " During 
Henderson's readings from Sterne, I personally wit- 
nessed," says Campbell, " his power over the feelings of 
Mrs. Siddons ; and the pathetic chapters of Shandy ex- 
cited no few tears from the brightest eyes that I have 
ever seen. His alternations of humor and tenderness 
kept her in the situation of her own Cordelia. 

'You have seen 
Sunshine and rain at once ; her smiles and tears 
Were like, a better way. Those happy smiles 
That play'd on her ripe lip, seem'd not to know 
What guests were in her eyes, which parted thence 
As pearls from diamonds dropp'd.' " 

On one occasion, after her sublime impersonation of 
Queen Katharine, in Henry the Eighth, she indulged her 
friends with a recitation of Collins' Ode to the Passions. 

She has been charged with the habit of attaching dra- 
matic tones and emphasis to commonplace colloquial 
subjects. She went, it is said, one day, into a shop at 
Bath, and after bargaining for some calico, and hearing 
the mercer put forth a hundred commendations of the 
cloth, she put the question to him, " But will it wash ? " 
in a manner so electrifying as to make the poor shopman 
start back from his counter. 

Moore once told a like story of her. A large party 
was invited to meet her. She remained silent, as was her 
wont, and disappointed the expectations of the whole 
company, who watched for every syllable that should 
escape her lips. At length, however, being asked if she 
would have some Burton's ale, she replied, with a sepul- 
chral intonation, that she " liked ale vastly." This anec- 
dote being told to Mr. Maturin, he said, " The voice of 
Mrs. Siddons, like St. Paul's bell, should never toll ex- 
cept for the death of kings." 

In Lockhart's Life of Scott it is written that Mrs. Sid- 



44 CHARACTERISTICS. 

dons, at the table of Sir Walter, in an eminently tragic 
voice, addressed a servant : " I asked for water, boy ; 
you 've brought me beer ! " 

The biographer of Irving states that not long after The 
Sketch Book had been published in London, and made 
its author remarked among its literary circles, he met 
Mrs. Siddons in some fashionable assemblage, and was 
brought up to be introduced. The Queen of Tragedy 
had then long left the stage, but her manner and tones to 
the last, partook of its measured stateliness. The inter- 
view was characteristic. As he approached and was in- 
troduced, she looked at him for a moment, and then, in 
her clear and *leep-toned voice, she slowly enunciated, 
"You 've made me weep/' After the appearance of his 
Bracebridge Hall, he met her in company again, and was 
asked by a friend to be presented. He told him he had 
before gone through that ceremony, but he had been so 
abashed by her address, and acquitted himself so shab- 
bily, that he was afraid to claim acquaintance. Come 
then with me, said his friend, and I will stand by you ; 
so he went forward, and singularly enough, was met with 
an address of the self-same fashion : " You Ve made me 
weep again." 

Her manner, even at the social board, partook of the 
state and gravity of tragedy. Not that there was an un- 
willingness to unbend, but that there was a difficulty in 
throwing aside the solemnity of long-acquired habit. She 
reminded Irving's brother Peter, who dined with her 
at the poet Campbell's, of Walter Scott's knights, who 
" carved the meal with their gloves of steel, and drank 
the red wine through their helmets barred." 

" It was a proud moment for Haydon," says Talfourd, 
in his Life and Letters of Lamb, " when at the opening 
of his Exhibition of the Entry into Jerusalem, while the 
crowd of visitors, distinguished in rank or talent, stood 
doubting whether in the countenance of the chief figure 



SARAH SIDDONS. 45 

the daring attempt to present an aspect differing from 
that which had enkindled the devotion of ages — to min- 
gle the human with the Divine, resolution with sweetness, 
dignified composure with the anticipation of mighty suf- 
fering — had not failed, Mrs. Siddons walked slowly up 
to the centre of the room, surveyed it in silence for a 
minute or two, and then ejaculated in her deep, low, 
thrilling voice, ' It is perfect ! ' quelled all opposition, and 
removed the doubt from his own mind, at least, forever." 
What peculiar emphasis she must have put into her 
words, when the curtain fell, at the end of a most un- 
pleasant engagement at Leeds ! She had suffered every 
annoyance from the audience ; but one of a very ludi- 
crous and distressing nature occurred, for which no part 
of the auditory was answerable. There is an amusing 
account of it in the Memoirs of Mathews. The evening 
was excessively hot, and Mrs. Siddons was tempted by a 
torturing thirst to consent to avail herself of the only ob- 
tainable relief proposed to her at the moment. Her 
dresser, therefore, despatched a boy in great haste to 
" fetch a pint of beer for Mrs. Siddons," at the same 
time charging him to be quick, as Mrs. Siddons was in a 
hurry for it. Meanwhile the play proceeded, and on 
the boy's return with the frothed pitcher, he looked about 
for the person who had sent him on his errand ; and not 
seeing her, inquired, " Where is Mrs. Siddons ? " The 
scene-shifter whom he questioned, pointing his finger to 
the stage where she was performing the sleeping scene of 
Lady Macbeth, replied, "There she is." To the surprise 
and horror of all the performers, the boy promptly walked 
on the stage close up to Mrs. Siddons, and with a total 
unconsciousness of the impropriety he was committing, 
presented the beer ! Her distress may be imagined ; she 
waved the boy away in her grand manner several times, 
without effect ; at last the people behind the scenes, by 
dint of beckoning, stamping, and calling in half-audible 



46 CHARACTERISTICS. 

whispers, succeeded in getting him off with the beer, part 
of which in his exit he spilled on the stage ; while the 
audience were in an uproar of laughter, which the dignity 
of the actress was unable to quell for several minutes. 
It was natural that Mrs. Siddons should be disgusted 
with her engagement at Leeds ; and on the dropping of 
the curtain at the close of her last night's performance, 
she clasped her hands in thankfulness, ejaculating in her 
most tragic tones, " Farewell, ye brutes ! and for ever, I 
trust : ye shall never torture me again, be assured." 

The death of her father and of her eldest daughter 
had a terrible and lasting effect upon her. Suffering 
from the shock of these events, she wisely and profoundly 
wrote : " The testimony of the wisdom of all ages, from 
the foundation of the world to this day, is childishness 
and folly, if happiness be any thing more than a name; 
and I am assured our own experience will not enable us 
to refute the opinion : no, no, it is the inhabitant of a 
better world. Content, the offspring of Moderation, is all 
we ought to aspire to here, and Moderation will be our 
best and surest guide to that happiness to which she will 
most assuredly conduct us." 

Sir Joshua Reynolds often honored her with his pres- 
ence at the theatre. He, it is said, always sat in the or- 
chestra ; and in that place were to be seen Burke, Gibbon, 
Sheridan, Windham, and the illustrious Fox, of whom it 
was frequently said, that iron tears were drawn down 
Pluto's gloomy cheeks. Often she was heard to boast of 
the times when every other day she had a note or a visit 
from Sir Joshua Reynolds, from Mrs. Piozzi, or from 
Erskine, Burke, Sheridan, or Malone. Erskine, the great- 
est pleader of his age, said that her performance was a 
school for orators, — that he had studied her cadences 
and intonations, and that to the harmony of her periods 
and pronunciation he was indebted for " his best dis- 
plays." 



SARAH SIDDONS. 47 

" I had frequently," she says, " the honor of dining 
with Sir Joshua Reynolds, in Leicester Square. At his 
house was assembled all the good, the wise, the talented, 
the rank and fashion of the age. About this time he 
produced his picture of me," she says, " in the character 
of the Tragic Muse. In justice to his genius, I cannot 
but remark his instantaneous decision of the attitude and 
expression of the picture. It was, in fact, decided within 
the twinkling of an eye. When I attended him for the 
first sitting, after more gratifying encomiums than I can 
now repeat, he took me by the hand, saying, ' Ascend 
yon undisputed throne, and graciously bestow upon me 
some good idea of the Tragic Muse.' I walked up the 
steps, and instantly seated myself in the attitude in which 
the Tragic Muse now appears. This idea satisfied him 
so well, that without one moment's hesitation he deter- 
mined not to alter it. ... I was delighted when he as- 
sured me that he was certain the colors would remain 
unfaded as long as the canvas would keep them together, 
which, unhappily, has not been the case with all his 
works : he gallantly added, with his own benevolent 
smile, ■ And, to confirm my opinion, here is my name ; 
for I have resolved to go down to posterity on the hem 
of your garment.' Accordingly it appears upon the 
corner of the drapery." 

It would not do to omit the description of her memo- 
rable call upon Dr. Johnson. " I do not exactly remem- 
ber the time," she says in her Memoranda, " that I was 
favored with an invitation from Dr. Johnson, but I think 
it was during the first year of my celebrity. The Doctor 
was then a wretched invalid, and had requested my friend 
Mr. Windham to persuade me to favor him by drinking 
tea with him in Bolt Court. ... The Doctor's favorite 
female character in Shakespeare was Katharine, in Henry 
VIII. He was most desirous of seeing me in that play; 
but said, ' I am too deaf and too blind to see or hear it at 



48 CHARACTERISTICS. 

a greater distance than the stage-box, and have little 
taste for making myself a public gaze, in so distinguished 
a situation.' I assured him that nothing would gratify me 
so much as to have him for an auditor, and that I could 
procure for him an easy-chair at the stage-door, where 
he would both see and hear, and be perfectly concealed. 
He appeared greatly pleased with this arrangement, but, 
unhappily for me, he did not live to fulfill our mutual 
wishes. Some weeks before he died I made him some 
morning visits. He was extremely, though formally, po- 
lite ; always apologized for being unable to attend me to 
my carriage; conducted me to the head of the stairs, 
kissed my hand, and bowing, said, ' Dear madam, I am 
your most humble servant ; ' and these were always re- 
peated without the slightest variation." 

At one of these visits of Mrs Siddons to Dr. Johnson, 
Frank, the Doctor's servant, could not immediately pro- 
vide the distinguished visitor with a chair. " You see, 
madam," said Johnson, "wherever you go there are no 
seats to be got." 

Mrs. Siddons sometimes went to the theatre to see 
others act, but it was remarked that she always paid the 
greatest attention to the performance ; that she did not, 
like some others, sit remarkably forward, and, so to speak, 
throw her whole person into the lap of the audience, un- 
der the pretext of applauding strongly those whom she 
admired. She never applauded at all, and this was judi- 
cious. She was sitting with their judges and hers. 

In acting, she seemed to forget herself wholly in her 
part. " It must have happened to her," said a critical 
contemporary, " as to every other being engaged in the 
concerns of life, to feel depressed by care, or absent by 
the rumination over probable occurrences. But on the 
stage, I never felt the least indication that she had a pri- 
vate existence, or could be any thing but the assumed 
character." 



SARAH SIDDONS. 49 

"Whenf Mrs. Siddons quitted her dressing-room," says 
the same observing authority, " I believe she left there 
the last thought about herself. Never did I see her eye 
wander from the business of the scene — no recognizance 
of the most noble of her friends exchanged the character 
for the individual." 

Mrs. Siddons' health was certainly very feeble during 
the winter and spring of 1804-5, anc ^ sne performed only 
twice at Covent Garden in the whole course of the sea- 
son. " Yet I suspect," says her biographer, " that bad 
health was not the only cause of her absence from the 
stage. This was the season when Master Betty made his 
first appearance on the London boards, and was equally 
the magnet of attraction at each of the great theatres. 
The popularity of that baby-faced boy, who possessed not 
even the elements of a good actor, was a hallucination in 
the public mind, and a disgrace to theatrical history. It 
enabled managers to give him sums for his childish rant- 
ing that were never accorded to the acting of a Garrick 
or a Siddons. His bust was cut in marble by the best 
sculptors ; he was painted by Opie and Northcote ; and 
the verses that were poured out upon him were in a style 
of idolatrous admiration." The young Roscius, as Mas- 
ter Betty was called, whom, at Belfast, Mrs. Siddons had 
inspired with an irresistible passion for tragedy, carried 
the public of London by storm, the multitude neglecting 
even the great actress herself for the youthful prodigy. 
But, making his fortune the first season, he was sent to 
college, and Mrs. Siddons again reigned supreme. 

The last season but one (1810-11), she performed 
nearly the whole of her characters ; and never, it is said, 
did she display greater dignity and force of mind. In 
18 1 2 she was announced to appear in Lady Macbeth for 
the last time. The following year, however, she appeared 
in that part for the benefit of her brother Charles. In 
the year 18 16 she performed Katharine once more, for 
4 



50 CHARACTERISTICS. 

the same object ; and consented to repeat her Lady Mac- 
beth to gratify the Princess Charlotte, and her Royal 
Consort of Saxe-Coburg. 

She gave public readings from Shakespeare at the Argyll 
Rooms, during two seasons, "from the two-fold induce- 
ments of personal gratification and an important addition 
to her income," which were now necessary to support her 
appropriately. " A large red screen formed what painters 
would call a background to the figure of the charming 
reader. She was dressed in white, and her dark hair, a 
la Grecque, crossed her temples in full masses. Behind 
the screen a light was placed ; and, as the head moved, 
a bright circular irradiation seemed to wave around its 
outline, which gave to a classic mind the impression, that 
the priestess of Apollo stood before you, uttering the in- 
spiration of the deity, in immortal verse." 

Joanna Baillie dined with Mrs. Siddons, in company 
with the poet Rogers and his sister. The great actress 
was now an old woman. " We expected," said the poetess, 
"to see much decay in her powers of expression, and 
consequently to have our pleasure mingled with pain. 
Judge then of our delight when we heard her read the best 
scenes of Hamlet, with expression of countenance, voice, 
and action, that would have done honor to her best days ! 
She was before us as an unconquerable creature, over 
whose astonishing gifts of nature Time had no power. At 
the end of the reading, Rogers said, ' Oh, that we could 
have assembled a company of young people to witness 
this, that they might have conveyed the memory of it 
down to another generation.' " 

Campbell had once by chance the honor of seeing Mrs. 
Siddons and the Duke of Wellington in the same party 
at Paris. They were observed, after a first mutual recog- 
nizance, to stand by each other without conversing. She 
had very little light conversation in mixed company for 
any body, but when her heart was interested, she was 



SARAH SIDDONS. 5 I 

very condescending, and would exert herself to please. 
She doted upon children. Some time after the poet had 
seen her in Paris, he visited her, with his son, who was 
then about six years old. He had to leave the child with 
her for about an hour, and in his absence he had some 
misgivings that it was unfair to have taxed her with the 
company of so young a visitant. But when he came back, 
he found the little fellow's face lighted up in earnest con- 
versation with her. She had been amusing him with 
stories adapted to his capacity, and bestowed attentions 
on a child which she had refused to a conqueror. 



III. 

DOCTOR JOHNSON. 

It is impossible to think of Doctor Johnson without 
being struck with his prodigiousness. He was extraor- 
dinary in every way : in his mind and in his body, in his 
wisdom and in his prejudices, in his learning and in his 
superstitions, in his piety and in his bigotry : there was 
nothing ordinary about him. All descriptions of him are 
nearly alike, all impressions much the same. However 
excellent or mean the artist or the biographer, the picture 
is recognized ; there is no mistaking the great lexicog- 
rapher, the imperial talker ; the man and the character 
stand before you. 

In St. Mary's Square, Lichfield, there is a statue of 
" the mighty sage." " The figure," says Hawthorne, " is 
colossal (though perhaps not much more so than the 
mountainous Doctor himself). . . . The statue is im- 
mensely massive, a vast ponderosity of stone, not finely 
spiritualized, nor, indeed, fully humanized, but rather re- 
sembling a great stone-bowlder than a man." 

BoswelFs book has done more for Johnson, in the 
judgment of Macaulay, than the best of his own books 
could do. " The memory of other authors is kept alive by 
their works. But the memory of Johnson keeps many of 
his works alive. The old philosopher is still among us 
in the brown coat with the metal buttons and the shirt 
which ought to be at wash, blinking, puffing, rolling his 
head, drumming with his fingers, tearing his meat like a 
tiger, and swallowing his tea in oceans." 

" To have seen such a man as Johnson," said Dr. Camp- 
bell, " was a thing to talk of a century hence." 



DOCTOR JOHNSON. 53 

" His person," says Lord Pembroke, " was large, ro- 
bust, I may say, approaching to the gigantic, and grown 
unwieldy from corpulency. His countenance was natu- 
rally of the cast of an ancient statue, but somewhat dis- 
figured by the scars of that evil, which, it was formerly 
imagined, the royal touch could cure. He was now [when 
he started on his tour to the Hebrides] in his sixty-fourth 
year, and was become a little dull of hearing. . . . His 
head, and sometimes also his body, shook with a kind of 
motion like the effect of a palsy : he appeared to be fre- 
quently disturbed by cramps, or convulsive contractions, 
of the nature of that distemper called St. Vitus' dance. 
He wore a full suit of plain brown clothes, with twisted 
hair-buttons of the same color, a large bushy grayish wig, 
a plain shirt, black worsted stockings, and silver buckles. 
Upon this tour, when journeying, he wore boots, and a 
very wide browm cloth great coat, with pockets which 
might almost have held the two volumes of his folio dic- 
tionary, and he carried in his hand a large English oak- 
stick." 

The great oak-stick that he had brought from London 
he lost in the Hebrides. It had, we are informed, the 
properties of a measure ; for one nail was driven into it 
at the length of a foot ; another at that of a yard. In 
return for the services it had done him, he said he would 
make a present of it to some museum • but he little 
thought he was so soon to lose it. As he preferred riding 
with a switch, it was intrusted to a fellow to be delivered 
to the baggage-man, who followed at some distance ; but 
he never saw it more. " I could not," said his friend, 
" persuade him out of a suspicion that it had been stolen. 
'No, no, my friend,' said he; 'it is not to be expected 
that any man in Mull, who has got it, will part with it. 
Consider, sir, the value of such a piece of timber here ! ' " 

Madame D'Arblay describes him as "tall, stout, grand, 
and authoritative : but he stoops horribly ; his back is 



54 CHARACTERISTICS. 

quite round: his mouth is continually opening and shut- 
ting, as if he were chewing something • he has a singular 
method of twirling his fingers, and twisting his hands : 
his vast body is in constant agitation, see-sawing back- 
ward and forward : his feet are never a moment quiet ; 
and his whole great person looked often as if it were 
going to roll itself, quite voluntarily, from his chair to the 
floor." 

He held his head to one side, we are told, toward his 
right shoulder, and shook it in a tremulous manner, mov- 
ing his body backward and forward, and rubbing his left 
knee in the same direction with the palm of his hand. 
In the intervals of articulating, he made various sounds 
with his mouth ; sometimes as if ruminating, br what is 
called chewing the cud, sometimes giving a half whistle, 
sometimes making his tongue play backward from the 
roof of his mouth, as if chuckling like a hen, and some- 
times protruding it against his upper gums in front, as if 
pronouncing quickly under his breath, too, too, .too, all 
this accompanied sometimes with a thoughtful look, but 
more frequently with a smile. Generally when he had 
concluded a period, in the course of a dispute, by which 
time hje was a good deal exhausted by violence and vo- 
ciferation, he used to blow out his breath like a whale. 
He was very near-sighted, and his big wig was often a 
good deal singed in consequence. 

As a boy he was overgrown, if not monstrous. A lady 
once consulted him on the degree of turpitude to be at- 
tached to her son's robbing an orchard. " Madam," said 
Johnson, "it all depends upon the weight of the boy. 
David Garrick, who was always a little fellow, robbed a 
dozen of orchards with impunity ; but the very first time 
I climbed up an apple-tree — for I was always a heavy 
boy — the, bough broke with me, and it was called judg- 
ment. I suppose that is why Justice is represented with 
a pair of scales." This, it must be remembered, is in 



DOCTOR JOHNSON. 55 

Hood's Johnsoniana ; but it seems too characteristic and 
natural to be wholly apocryphal. 

He is described as " a robust genius, born to grapple 
with whole libraries." When a child, in petticoats, he 
got by heart the Collect for the day from the Common 
Prayer-book, and repeated it "distinctly, though he had 
read it but twice. While yet a boy, during the first inter- 
view with a tutor, in the presence of grave professors, he 
quoted Macrobius, to the astonishment of the company. 
About the same time, after a violent attack of his disor- 
der, he communicated the state of his case to his physi- 
cian, in Latin, who was struck with the " extraordinary 
acuteness, research and eloquence " of the paper. 

It is easy for us to see him, as he has been described 
to us, at table. He was totally absorbed in the busi- 
ness of the moment ; his looks seemed riveted to his 
plate ; nor would he, unless in very high company, say 
one word, or even pay the least attention to what was 
said by others, till he had satisfied his appetite, which 
was so fierce, and indulged with such intenseness, that 
while in the act of eating, the veins of his forehead 
swelled, and generally a strong perspiration was visible. 
In eating and drinking he could refrain, but he could not 
use moderately. Every thing about his character and 
manners, it is stated, was forcible and violent; there 
never was any moderation • many a day did he fast, many 
a year did he refrain from wine • but when he did eat, it 
was voraciously; when he did drink wine, it was copi- 
ously. He could practice abstinence, but not temperance. 
He told Boswell that he had fasted two days without in- 
convenience, and that he had never been hungry but 
once. " Early in life," he said to Edwards, " I drank 
wine : for many years I drank none. I then, for several 
years, drank a great deal." " Some hogsheads, I war- 
rant you," responded Edwards, daringly, and was uncon- 
tradicted. "I did not," he said, on another occasion, 



56 CHARACTERISTICS. 

"leave off wine because I could not bear it. I have 
drunk three bottles of port without being the worse for 
it." We all know how copiously he drank tea at Thrale's. 
Sixteen cups, was it not, that he drank at a sitting ? 

He said when he lodged in the Temple, and had no 
regular system of life, he had fasted for two days at a 
time, during which he had gone about visiting, though 
not at the hours of dinner or supper ; that he had drank 
tea, but he had eaten no bread : that this was no inten- 
tional fasting, but happened just in the course of a lit- 
erary life. He closes one of his letters to Cave, " I am, 
sir, yours, impransus, Sam Johnson." Meaning, without 
breakfast. No wonder he speaks of his life, in a letter 
to Mrs. Thrale, as " diversified by misery, spent part in 
the sluggishness of penury, and part under the violence 
of pain, in gloomy discontent or importunate distress." 

In the midst of his own distresses and pains, we are 
assured, he was ever compassionate to the distresses of 
others, and actively earnest in procuring them aid. In a 
note to Sir Joshua Reynolds he says : " I am ashamed 
to ask for some relief for a poor man, to whom, I hope, 
I have given what I can be expected to spare. The man 
importunes me and the blow goes round." 

During the visit of the " Ursa Major " (as Johnson 
was called by BoswelFs father) to the Parliament House 
in Edinburgh, a brother of Lord Erskine, after being pre- 
sented to him by Boswell, and having made his bow, 
slipped a shilling into Boswell's hand, whispering that it 
was for the sight of his bear. " Johnson, to be sure," 
says Goldsmith, " has a roughness in his manner ; but no 
man alive has a more tender heart. He has nothing of 
the bear but his skin." 

" What a humanity the old man had ! " exclaims Thack- 
eray. " He was a kindly partaker of all honest pleasures : 
a fierce foe to all sin, but a gentle enemy to all sinners. 
' What, boys, are you for a frolic ? ' he cries, when Top- 



DOCTOR JOHNSON. 57 

ham Beauclerk comes and wakes him up at midnight : 
' I 'm with you.' And away he goes, tumbles on his 
homely old clothes, and trundles through Covent Gar- 
den with the young fellows. When he used to frequent 
Garrick's theatre, and had 'the liberty of the scenes, 
all the actresses,' he says, 'knew me, and dropped me a 
courtesy as they passed to the stage.' " 

What Erasmus said of Luther may with the same pro- 
priety be said of Johnson — there were two natures in 
him. There is a story that as Johnson was riding in a 
carriage through London on a rainy day, he overtook a 
poor woman carrying a baby, without any protection from 
the weather. Making the driver stop the coach, he in- 
vited the poor woman to get in with her child, which she 
did. After she had seated herself, the Doctor said to 
her, " My good woman, I think it most likely that the 
motion of the coach will wake your child in a little while, 
and I wish you to understand that if you talk any baby- 
talk to it, you will have to get out of the coach." As 
the Doctor had anticipated, the child soon awoke, and 
the forgetful mother exclaimed to it : " Oh ! the little 
dear, is he going to open his eyesy-pysy ? " " Stop the 
coach, driver ! " shouted Johnson ; and the woman had to 
get out and finish her journey on foot. What occurred 
when he went with his sweetheart, Mrs. Porter, to Derby 
on horseback to be married, is familiar to every one at 
all acquainted with his history. Here is his own account 
of their journey to church on the nuptial morn : " Sir, she 
had read the old romances, and had got into her head 
the fantastical notion that a woman of spirit should use 
her lover like a dog. So, sir, at first, she told me that I 
rode too fast, and she could not keep up with me ; and, 
when I rode a little slower, she passed me, and com- 
plained that I lagged behind. I was not to be made the 
slave of caprice ; and I resolved to begin as I meant to 
end. I therefore pushed on briskly, till I was fairly out 



58 CHARACTERISTICS. 

of her sight. The road lay between two hedges, so I 
was sure she could not miss it ; and I contrived that she 
should soon come up with me. When she did, I observed 
her to be in tears." This, be it remembered, just before 
what he declared to be " a love marriage on both sides ! " 

His melancholy was sometimes very distressing. One 
of his friends found him, on one occasion, in a deplor- 
able state — "sighing, groaning, talking to himself, and 
restlessly walking from room to room. He then used 
this emphatical expression of the misery he felt : ' I would 
consent to have a limb amputated to recover my spirits.' " 
Being asked if. he was really of opinion that, though in 
general happiness was very rare in human life, a man 
was not sometimes happy in the moment that was present, 
he answered, " Never, but when he is drunk." A lady 
once said to him that she could not understand why men 
got drunk ; she wondered how a man could find pleas- 
ure in making a beast of himself ; and Johnson said, 
" He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain 
of being a man." 

We have the authority of Miss Reynolds for stating 
that, for the diversion of his mind, he would sometimes 
climb pretty large trees, and that when he was between 
fifty and sixty years old. When he felt his fancy, or 
fancied that he felt it, disordered, his constant recurrence, 
says Mrs. Piozzi, was to the study of arithmetic ; and 
one day that he was totally confined to his chamber, and 
she inquired what he had been doing to divert himself, 
he showed her a calculation which she could scarce be 
made to understand, so vast was the plan of it, and so 
very intricate were the figures : no other, indeed, than 
that the National Debt, computing it at one hundred and 
eighty millions sterling, would, if converted into silver, 
serve to make a meridian of that metal, she forgot how 
broad (to use her own language), " for the globe of the 
whole earth." 



DOCTOR JOHNSON. 59 

His great resource of reading was generally effectual 
in quieting his mind and passions when most depressed 
or turbulent. An instance of his voracious reading is 
given by his biographer. Before dinner Doctor John- 
son seized upon Mr. Charles Sheridan's Account of the 
Late Revolution in Sweden, and seemed to read it raven- 
ously, as if he devoured it. " He knows how to read 
better than any one," said Mr. Knowles ; " he gets at the 
substance of a book directly ; he tears out the heart of 
it." He kept it wrapped up in the table-cloth, in his lap, 
during the time of dinner, from an avidity to have one 
entertainment in readiness when he should have finished 
another ; resembling (if one may use so coarse a simile) 
a dog who holds a bone in his paws in reserve, while he 
eats something else which has been thrown to him. 

Tate Wilkinson, in his Memoirs, relates that Johnson, 
being with Foote, Holland, Woodward, and others, at a 
party at Mr. Garrick's villa at Hampton, as they were 
conversing on different subjects, fell into a reverie, from 
which his attention was drawn by the accidentally casting 
his eyes on a book-case, to which he was as naturally at- 
tracted as the needle to the pole : on perusing the title- 
pages of the best bound, he muttered inwardly with in- 
effable contempt, but proceeded on his exploring business 
of observation, ran his finger down the middle of each 
page, and then dashed the volume disdainfully upon the 
floor, the which Garrick beheld with much wonder and 
vexation, while the most profound silence and attention 
was bestowed on the learned Doctor ; but when he saw 
his twentieth well-bound book thus manifestly disgraced 
on the ground, and expecting his whole valuable collec- 
tion would share the same fate, he could no longer re- 
strain himself, but suddenly cried out most vociferously, — 

" Why, d n it, Doctor, you, you, you will destroy all 

my books ! " At this, Johnson raised his head, paused, 
fixed his eyes, and replied, " Lookee, David, you do un- 
derstand plays, but you know nothing about books ! " 



60 CHARACTERISTICS. 

His personal courage was prodigious. He would beat 
large dogs that were fighting, till they separated. To 
prove that a gun would not burst if charged with many 
balls, he put in six or seven, and fired it off against a 
wall. One night he was attacked in the street by four 
men, all of whom he kept at bay till relieved by the 
watch. A man, having taken possession of his seat be- 
tween the side-scenes, and refusing to give it up, was 
tossed by the mad philosopher, chair and all, into the pit. 
Foote had resolved to ridicule him on the stage, but 
changed his mind when he heard that Johnson had been 
inquiring of Tom Davies, the bookseller, the price of 
oak-sticks. " I am told that Foote means to take me off, 
as he calls it, and I am determined the fellow shall not 
do it with impunity." He had sometime before knocked 
down Osborne with a folio, and put his foot upon his 
neck. " Sir, he was impertinent to me, and I beat him." 
His defiant letter to Macpherson shows how utterly im- 
possible it was to intimidate him. 

Yet he had a great horror of death. He said he 
never had a moment in which death was not terrible to 
him. Being told that Dr. Dodd seemed willing to die, 
and full of hopes of happiness, " Sir," said he, " Dr. Dodd 
would have given both his hands and both his legs to 
have lived. The better a man is, the more he is afraid 
of death, having a clearer view of infinite purity." 

He defended prize-fighting. " I am sorry," he said, 
" that prize-fighting is gone out. Every art should be 
preserved, and the art of defense is surely important. 
Prize-fighting made people accustomed not to be alarmed 
at seeing their own blood, or feeling a little pain from a 
wound." 

He hated gross flattery. When Hannah More was in- 
troduced to him she began singing his praise in the 
warmest manner, and continued in such an extravagant 
strain, that he turned suddenly to her, with a stern and 



DOCTOR JOHNSON. 6 1 

angry countenance, and said, " Madam, before you flatter 
a man so grossly to his face, you should consider whether 
or not your flattery is worth his having." 

Yet he thought himself very polite. Speaking of Dr. 
Barnard, the provost of Eton, he said, " Barnard was the 
only man that did justice to my good-breeding : and you 
may observe that I am well-bred to a degree of needless 
scrupulosity. No man," continued he, not observing the 
amazement of his hearers, " no man is so cautious not 
to interrupt another; no man thinks it so necessary to 
appear attentive when others are speaking ; no man so 
steadily refuses preference to himself, or so willingly be- 
stows it on another, as I do ; nobody holds so strongly 
as I do the necessity of ceremony, and the ill-effects 
which follow the breach of it : yet people think me rude ; 
but Barnard did me justice." , ^ 

Boswell said that though Johnson might be charged 
with bad humor at times, he was always a good-natured 
man • and Reynolds remarked, that when upon any occa- 
sion Johnson had been rough to any person in company, 
he took the first opportunity of reconciliation, by drink- 
ing to him, or addressing his discourse to 1 him ; but if he 
found his dignified indirect overtures sullenly neglected, 
he was quite indifferent, and considered himself as hav- 
ing done all that he ought to do, and the other as now in 
the wrong. 

Polite or not, he certainly excelled in compliment when 
he saw fit to indulge in it. His compliment to the wife 
of his friend Dr. Beattie is one of the prettiest we re- 
member. It occurs in a grave letter to a friend, and is 
as follows : " Of Dr. Beattie I should have thought much, 
but that his lady put him out of my head ; she is a very 
lovely woman." . 

His royal treatment of Mrs. Siddons will be recollected 
by every admirer of that magnificent woman. He was 
an old man and a wretched invalid when the great actress 



62 CHARACTERISTICS. 

became celebrated. He asked her in the most respectful 
and complimentary way to drink tea with him in Bolt 
Court. He lamented to her that his infirmities prevented 
him from seeing her in his favorite female character, 
Katharine, in Henry VIII. Some weeks before he died 
she made him some morning visits. He was extremely, 
though formally polite ; always apologized for being un- 
able to attend her to her carriage ; conducted her to the 
head of the stairs, kissed her hand, and bowing, said, 
" Dear madam, I am your most humble servant ; " and 
these, she says, were always repeated without the slightest 
variation. 

It was at one of these visits that Frank, the Doctor's 
servant, could not immediately provide the distinguished 
visitor with a chair. " You see, madam," said Johnson, 
" wherever you go there are no seats to be got." 

Best, in his Personal and Literary Memorials, relates 
this remarkable circumstance of Johnson : " After break- 
fast we walked to the top of a very steep hill behind the 
house. When we arrived at the summit, Mr. Langton 
said, ' Poor dear Doctor Johnson, when he came to this 
spot, turned to look down the hill, and said he was de- 
termined to take a roll down. When we understood 
what he meant to do (said Langton) we endeavored to 
dissuade him ; but he was resolute, saying he had not had 
a roll for a long time ; and taking out of his lesser pockets 
whatever might be in them — keys, pencil, purse, or pen- 
knife — and laying himself parallel with the edge of the 
hill, he actually descended, turning himself over and over 
till he came to the bottom.' This story was told with 
such gravity, and with an air of such affectionate remem- 
brance of a departed friend, that it was impossible to 
suppose this extraordinary freak of the great lexicog- 
rapher to have been a picture or invention of Mr. Lang- 
ton." 

Such, it is asserted, was the heat and irritability of his 



DOCTOR JOHNSON. 63 

blood, that he pared his nails to the quick, and scraped 
the joints of his fingers with a penknife till they were red 
and raw. "There is no arguing with Johnson," were -the 
words of Cibber, in one of his comedies, put, you re- 
member, into the mouth of Goldsmith ; " for when his 
pistol misses fire, he knocks you down with the but-end 
of it." Dr. Alexander McLean was so struck with his 
powerful conversation, that he observed, " This man is 
just a hogshead of sense." His laugh, too, was tremen- 
dous ; not like the laugh of any other man. " He laughs," 
says Davies, "like a rhinoceros." Which reminds you of 
Hunt's observation upon the elephant: "The more you 
consider him, the more he makes good his claim to be 
considered the Doctor Johnson of the brute creation." 
When Hogarth first saw him, he thought he was an idiot ; 
but when he heard him speak, he thought him inspired. 
Garrick said of his superlative powers of wit : " Rabelais 
and all the other wits are nothing, compared with him. 
You may be diverted by them ; but Johnson gives 3011 
a forcible hug, and shakes laughter out of you, whether 
you will or no." Speaking of Garrick, how funny it must 
have been to the boys of the little school at Edial to 
see the future great actor, whose death, Johnson said, 
"eclipsed the gayety of nations, and impoverished the 
stock of harmless pleasures," take off the "tumultuous 
and awkward fondness " of their master for " Tetty," or 
" Tetsy," as he called his wife, — who was fat, fifty, and 
any thing but pretty. 

That was an interesting view that Maxwell had of John- 
son, when two young women visited him to consult on the 
subject of Methodism, to which they were inclined. It 
shows graphically another side of the great moralist. 
" Come," said he, " you pretty fools, dine with Maxwell 
and me at the Mitre, and we will talk over the subject ; " 
which, said Maxwell, they did, and after dinner he took 
one of them upon his knee, and fondled her for half an 
hour together. 



64 CHARACTERISTICS. 

At the house of Lady Margaret MacDonald one of 
the married ladies, a lively, pretty little woman, good- 
humoredly sat down upon the Doctor's knee, and, being 
encouraged by some of the company, put her hands round 
his neck, and kissed him. " Do it again," said he, " and 
let us see who will tire first." He kept her on his knee 
some time, while he and she drank tea. 

He was great in his self-respect, and his conduct during 
the famous interview with the King in the library of the 
Queen's house, proved that he could not, under any cir- 
cumstances, be made to forget it. While he showed the 
profoundest respect for his majesty, his conversation was 
such as one gentleman would have with another. Dr. 
Hill, one of the King's favorites, was discussed and crit- 
icised, and the literary journals of the day were freely 
commented upon by both. 

He had, every body knows, an extravagant regard for 
the hierarchy, and particularly for the dignitaries of the 
Church. That bow of his to the Archbishop of York, 
described by Mr. Seward, who witnessed it, was in char- 
acter with the man, and was a thing to see. It was " such 
a studied elaboration of homage, such an extension of 
limb, such a flexion of body, as has seldom or ever been 
equaled." He once said that he who could entertain se- 
rious apprehensions of danger to the Church, would have 
" cried fire in the Deluge." 

"I hold Johnson," said Thackeray, "to be the great 
supporter of the British monarchy and Church during the 
last age — better than whole benches of bishops, better 
than Pitts, Norths, and the great Burke himself. John- 
son had the ear of the nation ; his immense authority 
reconciled it to loyalty, and shamed it out of irreligion. 
When George III. talked with him, and the people heard 
the great author's good opinion of the sovereign, whole 
generations rallied to the King. Johnson was revered as 
•a sort of oracle ; and the oracle declared for Church and 
King." 



DOCTOR JOHNSON. 65 



&j 



His sense of justice, too, was generally very stron 
and he supported it by his generosity. He had recom- 
mended, you remember, to Strahan, the printer, a poor 
boy from the country as an apprentice. Johnson, having 
inquired after him, said, " Mr. Strahan, let me have five 
guineas on account, and I '11 give this boy one. Nay, if 
a man recommends a boy, and does nothing for him, it 
is sad work. Call him down." The boy made his ap- 
pearance, when Johnson gave him a guinea, and some 
good advice. 

His charity and benevolence were unintermitted, and 
always beyond his means. Being asked by a lady why 
he so constantly gave money to beggars, he replied with 
great feeling, " Madam, to enable them to beg on." It 
was a common thing for him to empty his pockets when 
surrounded by beggars. We know how he took on his 
back the poor street-walker whom he found prostrate in 
the street, carried her to his home, and procured physician 
and nurse for her, and honorable employment. He filled 
up his house with a strange assortment of pensioners and 
dependents. Poor blind Mrs. Williams, the daughter of 
a Welsh physician ; Levett, " an odd little man who prac- 
ticed medicine among the poorest of the poor, and often 
received his fees in liquor ; " Mrs. Desmoulins and her 
daughter, " who had no other claim upon his benevolence 
than the service which that lady's father, Dr. Swinfen, 
had rendered to Johnson in a professional capacity in 
his youth ; " and Francis Barber, his negro servant, were 
among the inmates of his house. 

His prodigious pride is exhibited in his famous letter 
to Lord Chesterfield, — familiar to every reader, — in 
which he rejects the condescensions of the elegant would- 
be patron, and resents the seven years of cold indiffer- 
ence with which he had been treated. Carlyle, in his 
essay, characterizes it as "that far-famed Blast of Doom." 

His capacity to acquire, and his ability to work, under 
5 



66 CHARACTERISTICS. 

pressure, were extraordinary. He struck out at a single 
heat one hundred lines of The Vanity of Human Wishes. 
He wrote forty-eight of the printed octavo pages of his 
celebrated Life of Savage at a sitting. He wrote out 
whole Parliamentary debates from scanty notes furnished 
him by persons appointed to attend them; sometimes 
having nothing more communicated to him than the names 
of the several speakers, and the part they had taken in 
the debate. Sayings of his, dropped in casual conversa- 
tion, about comparatively unimportant things, will live as 
long as the language in which they were spoken. Wit- 
ness his reply, familiar to all the world, when asked, at 
the sale of Thrale's brewery, the value of the property to 
be disposed of : " We are not here," he said, " to sell a 
parcel of boilers and vats, but the potentiality of growing 
rich beyond the dreams of avarice." Who, but Johnson, 
in his most comfortable and self-satisfied mood, could 
have said it ? 

Having asked Langton if his father and mother had 
sat for their pictures, and being told that they had opposed 
it, he said, " Sir, among the anfractuosities of the human 
mind, I know not if it may not be one that there is a su- 
perstitious reluctance to sit for a picture." 

On one occasion the talk had run upon fable-writing, 
and Goldsmith observed that in most fables the animals 
seldom talk in character. " For instance," said he, " the 
fable of the little fishes, who petitioned Jupiter to be 
changed into birds — the skill consists in making them 
talk like little fishes." This struck Johnson as very ridic- 
ulous talk, and he began to roll himself about and to 
shake with laughter ; when Goldsmith broke in upon his 
entertainment by saying, " Why, Doctor Johnson, this is 
not so easy as you seem to think ; for if you were to make 
little fishes talk, they would talk like whales." 

An American lady was so charmed, at one time by 
his conversation that she could not help exclaiming, 



DOCTOR JOHNSON. 67 

" How he does talk ! Every sentence is an essay." Cer- 
tainly very many of his sentences that have been reported 
to us are very essences of essays. Short paragraphs are 
sometimes whole treatises, — full of wit, wisdom, logic, 
and profound knowledge of human nature. 

A gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, - "'/ 
married immediately after his wife died ; Johnson said^j 
" It was the triumph of hope over experience." 

Reynolds having observed that the real character of a 
man was found out by his amusements, Johnson added, 
"Yes, sir ; no man is a hypocrite in his pleasures." 

A friend mentioned to him that old Mr. Sheridan com- 
plained of the ingratitude of Mr. Wedderburne and Gen- 
eral Fraser, who were much obliged to him when they 
were young Scotchmen entering upon life in London. 
Johnson said, " Why, sir, a man is very apt to complain 
of the ingratitude of those who have risen far above him. 
A man when he gets into a higher sphere, into other hab- 
its of life, cannot keep up all his former connexions. 
Then, sir, those who knew him formerly upon a level with 
themselves, may think that they ought still to be treated 
as on a level, which cannot be ; and an acquaintance in 
a former situation may bring out things which it would be 
very disagreeable to have mentioned before higher com- 
pany, though, perhaps every body knows of them." 

" It is a very good custom," he said once, "to keep a 
journal for a man's own use ; he may write upon a card 
a day all that is necessary to be written, after he has had 
experience of life. At first there is a great deal to be 
written, because there is a great deal of novelty ; but 
when once a man has settled his opinions, there is sel- 
dom much to be set down." 

On one occasion he said, " There is nothing more 
likely to betray a man into absurdity, than condescension ; 
when he seems to suppose his understanding too powerful 
for his company." , 



68 CHARACTERISTICS. 

Of a certain lord who was something of a speaker, he 
said, " I never heard any thing from him in company that 
was at all striking; and depend upon it, sir, it is when 
you come close to a man in conversation, that you dis- 
cover what his real abilities are ; to make a speech in a 
public assembly is a knack." 

He observed, " There is a wicked inclination in most 
people to suppose an old man decayed in his intellects. 
If a young or middle-aged man, when leaving a company, 
does not recollect where he laid his hat, it is nothing ; 
but if the same inattention is discovered in an old man, 
people will shrug up their shoulders, and say, ' his mem- 
ory is going.' " 

" Sir," he said, " there is nothing by which a man exas- 
perates most people more, than by displaying a superior 
ability of brilliancy in conversation. They seem pleased 
at the time ; but their envy makes them curse him at their 
hearts." 

" Our religion is in a book," he said ; " we have an 
order of men whose duty it is to teach it; we have one 
day in the week set apart for it, and this is in general 
pretty well observed : yet ask the first ten gross men you 
meet, and hear what they can tell you of their religion." 

An easy life had been imputed to clergymen. Johnson 
said, " Sir, the life of a parson, of a conscientious clergy- 
man, is not easy. I have always considered a clergyman 
as the father of a larger family than he is able to main- 
tain. I would rather have chancery suits upon my hands 
than the cure of souls. No, sir, I do not envy a clergy- 
man's life as an easy life, nor do I envy the clergyman 
who makes it an easy life." 

No saint, we are assured, in the course of his religious 
warfare, was more sensible of the unhappy failure of 
pious resolves, than Johnson. He said one day, talking 
to an acquaintance on this subject, " Sir, hell is paved 
with good intentions." 



DOCTOR JOHNSON. 69 

" He that encroaches on another's dignity," he once 
said, " puts himself in his power ; he is either repelled 
with helpless indignity, or endured by clemency and con- 
descension." 

You remember his refutation of Bishop Berkeley's in- 
genious * sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, 
and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. It 
was observed that though we are satisfied the doctrine is 
not true, it is impossible to refute it. Johnson answered, 
striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, 
till he rebounded from it, " I refute it thus." 

Talking of a court-martial that was sitting upon a very 
momentous public occasion, he expressed much doubt of 
an enlightened decision ; and said, that " perhaps there 
was not a member of it, who in the whole course of his 
life, had ever spent an hour by himself in balancing prob- 
abilities." 

Dr. Taylor commended a physician, and said, " I fight 
many battles for him, as many people in the country dis- 
like him." Johnson replied, " But you should consider, 
sir, that by every one of your victories he is a loser ; for 
every man of whom you get the better will be very angry, 
and resolve not to employ him ; whereas if people get 
the better of you in argument about him, they '11 think, 
'We'll send for the doctor, nevertheless.' " 

In reply to the observation that a certain gentleman 
had remained silent the whole evening in the midst of a 
very brilliant and learned society, Johnson said, " Sir, the 
conversation overflowed, and drowned him." 

Being solicited to compose a funeral sermon for the 
daughter of a tradesman, he naturally inquired into the 
character of the deceased; and being told that she was 
remarkable for her humility and condescension to infe- 
riors, he observed that those were very laudable qualities, 
but it might not be so easy to discover who the lady's 
inferiors were. 



70 CHARACTERISTICS. 

The question, whether drinking improved conversation 
and benevolence, was discussed. Sir Joshua maintained 
it did. Johnson said, " No, sir ; before dinner, men meet 
with great inequality of understanding; and those who 
are conscious of their inferiority have the modesty not 
to talk. When they have drunk wine, every man feels 
himself happy, and loses that modesty, and grows impu- 
dent and vociferous ; but he is not improved : he is only 
not sensible of his defects." 

A pension he defined in his Dictionary to be, " An al- 
lowance made to any one without an equivalent. In Eng- 
land it is generally understood to mean pay given to a 
state-hireling for treason to his country." After such a 
definition, it is scarcely to be wondered, naturally observes 
the critic, that Johnson paused, and felt some " com- 
punctious visitings " before he accepted a pension him- 
self. 

He loved a good hater. " Dr. Bathurst," he said, 
" was a man to my heart's content : he hated a fool, and 
he hated a rogue, and he hated a Whig; he was a very 
good hater." 

Every one knows the violence of his prejudices against 
the Whigs, the Americans, the Scotch, and the Presby- 
terians. He meant to say a very severe thing when he 
called Burke a " bottomless Whig," and generally spoke 
of Whigs as rascals, and maintained that the first Whig 
was the devil. Hating Walpole and the Whig excise act, 
he defines Excise, " A hateful tax levied upon commodi- 
ties, and adjudged, not by the common judges of prop- 
erty, but by wretches hired by those to whom excise is 
paid." He said, " I am willing to love all mankind, except 
an American ; " and his " inflammable corruption burst- 
ing into horrid fire, he breathed out threatenings and 
slaughter ; " calling them " rascals, robbers, pirates ; " 
and exclaiming, " he 'd burn and destroy them." Miss 
Seward, looking at him with mild but steady astonish- 



DOCTOR JOHNSON. 71 

ment, said, " Sir, this is an instance that we are always 
most violent against those whom we have injured." He 
was irritated still more by this delicate and keen reproach ; 
and roared out another tremendous volley, which one 
might fancy, imagined Boswell, could be heard across the 
Atlantic. The inn that the Doctor and Boswell once 
stayed at for a while was wretched. " Let us see now 7 ," 
said Boswell, " how we should describe it." " Describe 
it, sir," said Johnson. " Why, it was so bad that Bos- 
well wished to be in Scotland." " Scotland is a very vile 
country, to be sure, sir," said Johnson to Strahan, who 
was also a Scotchman. " Well, sir," replied the latter, 
somewhat mortified, " God made it." " Certainly he did," 
answered Johnson, " but we must remember that he made 
it for Scotchmen, and comparisons are odious, Mr. Stra- 
han ; but God made hell." Oats he defines, in his Dic- 
tionary, " A grain which in England is generally given to 
horses, but in Scotland supports the people." " Yes," 
observed Lord Elibank, when he heard the offensive defi- 
nition, " and where will you find such horses and such 
men ? " He would not allow Scotland to derive any 
credit from Lord Mansfield, for he was educated in Eng- 
land. " Much," said he, " may be made of a Scotchman 
if he be caught young." But we must say that we think 
that he was bigger in his bigotries than in any thing else. 
Who but " that majestic teacher of moral and religious 
wisdom " could have declined to hear Dr. Robertson 
preach, for no other reason than that he " would not be 
seen in a Presbyterian church " ? One of the tall steeples 
in Edinburgh, which he was told was in danger, he wished 
not to be taken down ; " for," said he, " it may fall on 
some of the posterity of John Knox ; and no great mat- 
ter." Like the detested and infamous Jeffreys, he could 
" smell a Presbyterian forty miles.'" 

Not long before his death, Johnson applied to Langton 
for spiritual advice. " I desired him," he said, " to tell 



72 CHARACTERISTICS. 

me sincerely in what he thought my life was faulty." 
Langton wrote upon a sheet of paper certain texts rec- 
ommending Christian charity ; and explained, upon in- 
quiry, that he was pointing at Johnson's violence of vitu- 
peration and contradiction. The old Doctor began by 
thanking him earnestly for his kindness ; but gradually 
waxed savage, and asked Langton, in a loud and angry 
tone, " What is your drift, sir ? " He complained of the 
well-meant advice, to Boswell, with a sense that he had 
been unjustly treated. It was a scene for a comedy, as 
Reynolds observed, to see a penitent get into a passion 
and belabor his confessor. 

Dozing one day in a railway car, in the State of Min- 
nesota, there appeared before us, suddenly, in a seat at 
the other end of the carriage, a personage who seemed 
to be in every way familiar. His face was toward us, 
and he was busily engaged conversing with the man in 
the seat before him. The figure was enormous, and very 
remarkable. It filled nearly the whole seat, so gigantic 
it appeared. It stooped horribly ; the back was round ; 
the mouth was continually opening and shutting, as if the 
man were chewing something ; he twisted his fingers ; he 
twirled his hands ; he see-sawed backward and forward ; 
his feet seemed never for a moment quiet ; his whole 
great person looked often as if it were going to roll itself 
quite voluntarily from his seat to the floor. Now and 
then he rubbed his knee with the palm of his hand, chew- 
ing his cud, and blowing out his breath like a whale. His 
face was disfigured by scars. His eyes were near, and 
otherwise imperfect. His head shook with a kind of 
motion like the effect of a palsy. He wore a bushy gray 
wig, and a brown coat, with metal buttons, and enor- 
mous pockets. Black worsted stockings and silver buckles 
were conspicuous. A huge English oak-stick was be- 
tween his knees. He talked in a bow-wow way. He 
laughed like a rhinoceros. We felt sure the remarkable 



DOCTOR JOHNSON. 73 

man was Doctor Johnson ; so sure, that we determined to 
approach him, whatever the risk. Respectfully, reveren- 
tially calling him by name, and apologizing for the in- 
trusion, he said, with a sort of smile extending over his 
now more familiar face, " No intrusion, sir. Your ap- 
proach is both natural and welcome. Let me introduce 
you to my friend Boswell. He is a Scotchman, sir, but 
he won't hurt you." In the act of extending a hand to 
Bozzy, and laughing at so amusing an exhibition of one 
of the Doctor's characteristic prejudices, the interview 
ended. 

Cuthbert Shaw, in his poem entitled The Race, in which 
he whimsically made the living poets of England contend 
for pre-eminence of fame by running, gives an animated 
description of Johnson. We have only room for eight 
lines of it : — 

" To view him, porters with their loads would rest, 
And babes cling frighted to the nurse's breast. 
With looks convulsed, he roars in pompous strain, 
And, like an angry lion, shakes his mane. 
The Nine, with terror struck, who ne'er had seen 
Aught human with so terrible a mien, 
Debating whether they should stay or run, 
Virtue steps forth, and claims him for her son." 



IV. 
LORD MACAULAY. 

AS A READER. 

Perhaps no one ever existed who was a greedier reader 
or who had better mental digestion than Lord Macaulay. 
From his infancy, he was an insatiable and omnivorous 
devourer of books. His nephew, in his delightful biog- 
raphy of him, tells us, that from the time he was three 
years old he read incessantly, for the most part lying on 
the rug before the fire, with his book in one hand, and a 
piece of bread and butter in the other. A woman who 
lived in the house as a parlor-maid, told how he used to 
sit in his nankeen frock, perched, on the table by her as 
she was cleaning the plate, expounding to her out of a 
volume as big as himself. Hannah More, it is said, was 
fond of relating how she called at Mr. Macaulay's, and 
was met by a fair, pretty, slight child, about four years of 
age, with abundance of light hair, who came to the front- 
door to receive her, and tell her that his parents were out, 
but that if she would be good enough to come in he would 
bring her a glass of old spirits ; a proposition which 
greatly startled the good lady, who had never aspired be- 
yond cowslip-wine. When questioned as to what he knew 
about old spirits, he could only say that Robinson Crusoe 
often had some. In childhood he was permitted to make 
frequent and long visits to the Misses More, and to Han- 
nah especially he was greatly indebted for valuable sug- 
gestions and direction in his reading. When he was six 
years old, she writes to him: " Though you are a little 



LORD MACAULAY. 75 

boy now, you will one day, if it please God, be a man ; 
but long before you are a man I hope you will be a 
scholar. I therefore wish you to purchase such books as 
will be useful and agreeable to you then, and that you 
employ this very small sum in laying a little tiny corner- 
stone for your future library." A year or two afterward, 
she thanks him for his " two letters, so neat and free from 
blots. By this obvious improvement, you have entitled 
yourself to another book. You must go to Hatchard's 
and choose. I think we have nearly exhausted the epics. 
What say you to a little good prose ? Johnson's Hebrides, 
or Walton's Lives, unless you would like a neat edition 
of Cowper's Poems, or Paradise Lost, for your own eat- 
ing ? In any case, choose something which you do not 
possess. I want you to become a complete Frenchman, 
that I may give you Racine, the only dramatic poet I 
know in any modern language that is perfectly pure and 
good." 

With such intelligent and encouraging associations, and 
with such healthy mental appetites, he grew every day in 
intellectual capacity. While yet a boy, at school at Cam- 
bridge, he attracted the attention of Dean Milner, the 
eminent President of Queen's College, then at the sum- 
mit of its celebrity. The Dean " recognized the promise 
of the boy, and entertained him at his college residence 
on terms of friendliness and almost equality." After one 
of these visits, he writes to Macaulay's father : " Your 
lad is a fine fellow. He shall stand before kings. He 
shall not stand before mean men." In his thirteenth 
year, " the boy " wrote to his mother : " The books 
which I am at present employed in reading to myself 
are, in English, Plutarch's Lives, and Milner's Ecclesi- 
astical History; in French, Fenelon's Dialogues of the 
Dead." 

" The secret of his immense acquirements," says Tre- 
velyan, " lay in two invaluable gifts of Nature — an un- 



y6 CHARACTERISTICS. 

erring memory, and the capacity for taking in at a glance 
the contents of a printed page. During the first part of 
his life, he remembered whatever caught his fancy, with- 
out going through the process of consciously getting it 
by heart. As a child, he accompanied his father on an 
afternoon call, and found on the table the Lay of the Last 
Minstrel, which he had never before met with. He kept 
himself quiet with his prize while the elders were talking, 
and on his return home sat down upon his mother's bed, 
and repeated to her as many cantos as she had the pa- 
tience or the strength to listen to. At one period of his 
life he was known to say that, if by some miracle of van- 
dalism all copies'of Paradise Lost and the Pilgrim's Pro- 
gress were destroyed off the face of the earth, he would 
undertake to reproduce them both from recollection when- 
ever a revival of learning came." Certain provincial 
newspaper poems, which he happened to look once 
through, while waiting in a coffee-room for a post-chaise, 
and never gave a thought to for forty years, " at the end 
of that time he repeated them both without missing, or, 
as far as he knew, changing a single word." During his 
last years he had a habit, while he was dressing in the 
morning, of learning by heart one of Martial's epigrams, 
of which he was very fond. 

An illustration of Macaulay's preternatural quickness 
is given by Caroline Fox in her Journal. A friend of his 
traveling with him was reading a new book which Ma- 
caulay had not seen. The friend grew weary and in- 
dulged in a ten minutes' sleep ; on awaking, they resumed 
their talk, which fell on topics apropos of the book, when 
Macaulay was full of quotations, judgments and criticisms. 
" But I thought you had not seen it," said his friend. 
" Oh, yes • when you were asleep I looked at it ; " and it 
seemed as if no corner of it were unexplored. 

" Many Londoners — not all — (said Thackeray) have 
seen the British Museum Library. ... I have (he says) 



LORD MACAULAY. 77 

seen all sorts of domes of Peters and Pauls, Sophia, Pan- 
theon, — what not? — and have been struck by none of 
them as much as by that catholic dome in Bloomsbury, 
under which one million volumes are housed. . . . Under 
the dome which held Macaulay's brain, and from which 
his solemn eyes looked out on the world, what a vast, 
brilliant, and wonderful store of learning was ranged ! 
what strange lore would he not fetch for you at your bid- 
ding ! A volume of law or history, a book of poetry 
familiar or forgotten (except by himself, who forgot noth- 
ing), a novel ever so old, and he had it at hand." 

He was a voracious novel-reader, and read all the ro- 
mances, good and bad, he could lay his hands on. He 
was so familiar with Sir Charles Grandison that he thought 
it probable that he could rewrite it from memory. On 
the last page of a trashy sentimental novel read by him, 
"there appears an elaborate computation of the number 
of fainting-fits that occur in the course of the five vol- 



umes." 



"After all," he says, in a letter to Ellis, soon after he 
arrived in India, " the best rule in all parts of the world, 
as in London itself, is to be independent of other men's 
minds. My power of finding amusement without com- 
panions was pretty well tried on my voyage. I read in- 
satiably • the Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil, Horace, Csesar's 
Commentaries, Bacon, (De Augmentis,) Dante, Petrarch, 
Ariosto, Tasso, Don Quixote, Gibbon's Rome, Mill's 
India, all the seventy volumes of Voltaire, Sismondi's 
History of France, and the seven thick folios of the Bio- 
graphia Britannica." In a letter written to his sister 
Margaret, soon after, he speaks of his " thirst for knowl- 
edge," his " passion for holding converse with the greatest 
minds of all ages and nations," his "power of forgetting 
what surrounded him," and of "living with the past, the 
future, the distant, and the unreal. Books are becoming 
every thing to me," he says. " If I had at .this moment 



y8 CHARACTERISTICS. 

ray choice of life, I would bury myself in one of those 
immense libraries that we saw together at the universities, 
and never pass a waking hour without a book before me." 
Conspicuous in his letters from India to Mr. Napier, the 
editor of the Edinburgh Review, were his requests for 
books, books. He writes to Ellis from Calcutta : " I 
have just finished a second reading of Sophocles. I am 
now deep in Plato, and intend to go right through all his 
works." In another letter to the same person, soon after, 
he says : " During the last thirteen months I have read 
yEschylus twice ; Sophocles twice ; Euripides once ; Pin- 
dar twice ; Callimachus ; Apollonius Rhodius ; Quintus 
Calaber ; Theocritus twice ; Herodotus ; Thucydides ; 
almost all Xenophon's works ; almost all Plato ; Aris- 
totle's Politics, and a good deal of his Organon, besides 
dipping elsewhere in him ; the whole of Plutarch's Lives ; 
about half of Lucian ; two or three books of Athenaeus ; 
Plautus twice ; Terence twice ; Lucretius twice ; Catul- 
lus ; Tibullus : Propertius ; Lucan ; Statius ; Silius Ital- 
icus ; Livy; Velleius Paterculus ; Sallust; Ccesar • and, 
lastly, Cicero. I have, indeed, still a little of Cicero left ; 
but I shall finish him in 4 few days. I am now deep in 
Aristophanes and Lucian." A little later, he writes to 
Ellis again : " My mornings, from five to nine, are quite 
my own. I still give them to ancient literature. I have 
read Aristophanes twice through since Christmas, and 
have also read Herodotus and Thucydides again. I got 
into a way last year of reading a Greek play every Sun- 
day. I began on Sunday, the 18th of October, with the 
Prometheus, and next Sunday I shall finish with the Cy- 
clops of Euripides. ... I have read, as one does read 
such stuff, Valerius Maximus, Annaeus Florus, Lucius Am- 
pelius, and Aurelius Victor. I have also gone through 
Phaedrus. I am now better employed. I am deep in the 
Annals of Tacitus, and I am at the same time reading 
Seutonius." With plenty of acute criticism following 



LORD MACAULAY. 79 

these dry lists of classical literature, showing how per- 
fectly saturated he was with it. In another letter to Ellis, 
two months later, he says : " I read in the evenings a 
great deal of English, French, and Italian, and a little 
Spanish. I have picked up Portuguese enough to read 
Camoens with care, and I want no more." A little later, 
he says : " My classical studies go on vigorously. I have 
read Demosthenes twice — I need not say with what de- 
light and admiration. I am now deep in Isocrates ; and 
from him I shall pass to Lysias. I have finished Dio- 
dorus Siculus at last, after dawdling over him at odd 
times ever since last March. He is a stupid, credulous, 
prosing old ass ; yet I heartily wish that we had a good 
deal more of him." And so he goes on, writing familiarly 
of Arrian, Quintus Curtius, Longus, Xenophon, Helio- 
dorus, Achilles Tatius, Theocritus, Pliny, Marcellinus, 
Quintilian, Lucan, etc., to the bottom of his sheet. 

In November, 1836, (he was then thirty-six years old,) 
in a letter to Napier, he says : " In little more than a year 
I shall be embarking for England, and I am determined 
to employ the four months of my voyage in mastering 
the German language. I should be much obliged to you 
to send me out, as early as you can, so that they may be 
certain to arrive in time, the best grammar and the best 
dictionary that can be procured ; a German Bible ; Schil- 
ler's works ; Goethe's works ; and Niebuhr's History, 
both in the orginal and in the translation. My way of*^ 
learning a language is always to begin with the Bible, I 
which I can read without a dictionary. After a few days I 
passed in this way, I am master of all the common par-/ 
tides, the common rules of syntax, and a pretty large[ 
vocabulary^ Then I fall on some good classical work/ 
It was in this way that I learned both Spanish and Por- 
tuguese, and I shall try the same course with German." 

His journals, after his return from India, are full of 
notes of his reading. His first prose letter to his little 



SO CHARACTERISTICS. 

niece, Margaret, contains this sentence : " If any body 
would make me the greatest king that ever lived, with 
palaces, and gardens, and fine dinners, and wine, and 
coaches, and beautiful clothes, and hundreds of servants, 
on condition that I would not read books, I would not 
be a king. I would rather be a poor man in a garret, 
with plenty of books, than a king who did not love read- 
ing." When he was a little past fifty, he wrote to his old 
friend Ellis : "I do not think that I ever, at Cambridge 
or India, did a better day's work in Greek than to-day. 
I have read at one stretch fourteen books of the Odyssey, 
from the sixth to the nineteenth, inclusive. I did it while 
walking to Worcester and back." In his journal, he says : 
" I was afraid to be seen crying by the parties of walkers 
that met me as I came back ; crying for Achilles cutting 
off his hair ; crying for Priam rolling on the ground in 
the court-yard of his house : mere imaginary beings, 
creatures of an old ballad-maker, who died near three 
thousand years ago." In October, 1857, two years before 
his death, he wrote : " I walked in the portico, and learned 
by heart the noble fourth act of the Merchant of Venice. 
There are four hundred lines, of which I knew a hundred 
and fifty. I made myself perfect master of the whole, 
the prose letter included, in two hours." That "invinci- 
ble love of reading," which Gibbon declared that he 
would not exchange for the treasures of India, was with 
Macaulay, says his nephew and biographer, " a main ele- 
ment of happiness in one of the happiest lives that has 
ever fallen to the lot of a biographer to record." The 
great reader died in his library, in his easy-chair, in his 
usual dress, with his book open on the table beside him. 

AS A WRITER. 

When Macaulay was seven years old, he took it into 
his head to write a compendium of universal history, and 
gave, it is stated, a tolerably connected view of the lead- 



LORD MAC AULA Y. 8 1 

ing events from the Creation to the beginning of this 
century, filling about a quire of paper. Before he was 
eight years old, he told his mother that he had been writ- 
ing a paper, to be translated into Malabar, to persuade 
the people of Travancore to embrace the Christian re- 
ligion. On reading it, she found it to contain "a very 
clear idea of the leading facts and doctrines of that relig- 
ion, with some strong arguments for its adoption." About 
the same time, he determined on writing a poem in six 
cantos, which he called The Battle of Cheviot. After he 
had finished three of the cantos, of about one hundred 
and twenty lines each, which he did in a couple of days, 
he became tired of it. " I make no doubt," says his 
mother, " he would have finished his design, but as he 
was proceeding with it the thought struck him of writing 
an heroic poem, to be called Olaus the Great, or The Con- 
quest of Mona, in which, after the manner of Virgil, he 
might introduce in prophetic song the future fortunes of 
his family." The clan to which the bard belonged was 
supposed to derive its name from Olaus Magnus, King of 
Norway; and so much as remains of the great family 
epic is an interesting treasure. The specimen stanzas 
given by his biographer read very well, considering the 
childhood of the poet. He also wrote many hymns, which 
Hannah More pronounced to be " quite extraordinary for 
such a baby." A little later, he undertook the produc- 
tion of an extended poem, which he entitled Fingal : a 
Poem in XII Books. It is described as " a vast pile of 
blank verse." Two of the " books " are in a " complete 
and connected shape, while the rest of the story is lost 
amidst a labyrinth of many hundred scattered lines." 

The voluminous writings of his childhood, we are in- 
formed, displayed the same lucidity of meaning and scru- 
pulous accuracy in punctuation and the other minor details 
of the literary art, which characterize his mature works. 
This was a result, doubtless, in great part, of the care in 
6 



82 CHARACTERISTICS. 

his home education, especially of the careful teaching and 
good advice of his mother. Here are a few advisory, 
encouraging sentences from one of her letters to her " dear 
Tom : " "I know you write with great ease to yourself, 
and would rather write ten poems than prune one ; but 
remember, that excellence is not attained at first. All 
your pieces are much mended after a little reflection, and 
therefore take some solitary walks, and think on each 
separate thing. Spare no time or trouble to render each 
piece as perfect as you can, and then leave the event 
without one anxious thought. I have always admired a 
saying of one of the old heathen philosophers. When 
a friend was condoling with him that he so well deserved 
of the gods, and yet that they did not shower their favors 
on him, as on some others less worthy, he answered, 'I 
will, however, continue to deserve well of them.' So do 
you, my dearest." 

Macaulay's father disapproved of novel-reading. While 
his novel-devouring son was yet a boy, he received an 
anonymous letter addressed to him as editor of the Chris- 
tian Observer, " defending works of fiction, and eulogiz- 
ing Fielding and Smollett. This he incautiously inserted 
in his periodical, and brought down upon himself the 
most violent objurgations from scandalized contributors, 
one of whom informed the public that he had committed 
the obnoxious number to the flames, and should thence- 
forward cease to take in the magazine. The editor re- 
plied with becoming spirit, although by that time he was 
aware that the communication, the insertion of which in 
an unguarded moment had betrayed him into a contro- 
versy for which he had so little heart, had proceeded from 
the pen of his son." Such, we are assured, was young 
Macaulay's first appearance in print. 

At twenty-two, he became a contributor to Knight's 
Quarterly Magazine. The boldness and freedom of some 
of his articles were the cause of some not very agreeable 



LORD MACAULAY. 83 

correspondence with his father. About that time ap- 
peared "A Conversation between Mr. Abraham Cowley 
and Mr. John Milton touching the great civil war." He 
was now in his twenty-fifth year, and his abilities were 
becoming pretty well known to the literary profession. 
Overtures were' made to him by Jeffrey, who was then the 
editor of the Edinburgh Review, and the result was the 
production of the article on Milton. The effect on the au- 
thor's reputation, says his nephew and biographer, was 
instantaneous. Like Lord Byron, he awoke one morning 
and found himself famous. Murray declared that it 
would be worth the copyright of Childe Harold to have 
Macaulay on the staff of the Quarterly. The family 
breakfast-table in Bloomsbury was covered with cards of 
invitation to dinner from every quarter of London, and 
his father groaned in spirit over the conviction that thence- 
forward the law would be less to him than ever. Robert 
Hall, the great preacher, " then well-nigh worn out with 
that long disease, his life, was discovered lying on the 
floor, employed in learning, by aid of grammar and dic- 
tionary, enough Italian to enable him to verify the par- 
allel between Milton and Dante." Jeffrey, in acknowl- 
edging the receipt of the manuscript, said : " The more I 
think, the less I can conceive where you picked up that 
style." 

His article on Byron, too, proved to be very popular — 
" one among a thousand proofs," he said to his sister, 
"of the bad taste of the public." Blackwood's Maga- 
zine, of course, disparaged him. It described him " as a 
little splay-footed, ugly, dumpling of a fellow, with a 
mouth from ear to ear." The review of Croker's Boswell 
made a great sensation. " Croker," he wrote to Ellis, 
"looks across the House of Commons at me with a leer 
of hatred, which I repay with a gracious smile of pity." 
Busy as he was for eighteen months at the Board of Trade, 
he managed to supply the Edinburgh Review with the 



84 CHARACTERISTICS. 

articles on Horace Walpole, Lord Chatham, and Lord 
Mahon's History. Napier, then the editor of the Edin- 
burgh, called upon him to tell him that the sale of the 
periodical was falling off, and that his articles were " the 
only things that kept the work up at all." The book- 
sellers said : " The Review sells, or does not sell, accord- 
ing as there are, or are not, articles by Macaulay." Napier 
said of his article on Walpole, that it was the best that 
he had written. Macaulay himself said of it to his sister 
Margaret : " Nothing ever cost me more pains than the 
first half ; I never wrote any thing so flowingly as the lat- 
ter half ; and I like the latter half the best." 

A few months after he arrived in India, he sent to Na- 
pier his article on Mackintosh ; and less than two years 
after — being then in his thirty-sixth year — he produced 
the more famous article on Bacon. To Napier he says, 
writing from Calcutta : " At last, I send you an article of 
interminable length, about Lord Bacon. I hardly know 
whether it is not too long for an article in a Review ; but 
the subject is of such vast extent that I could easily have 
made the paper twice as long as it is. ... I never be- 
stowed so much care on any thing that I have written. 
There is not a sentence in the latter half of the article 
which has not been repeatedly recast. I have no expec- 
tation that the popularity of the article will have any pro- 
portion to the trouble which I have expended on it." 
The paper occupied one hundred and four of the large 
pages of the Review. Jeffrey saw it before it was printed, 
and said of it to Napier : " Since Bacon himself, I do 
not know that there has been any thing so fine." And 
marvelous the essay seems when we consider that it was 
written at the time when he was laboriously and exhaus- 
tively engaged upon "a complete penal code for a hun- 
dred millions of people, with a commentary explaining 
and defending the provisions of the text;" and in a 
climate that " destroys all the works of man, with scarcely 



LORD MACAU LAY. S5 

one exception. Steel rusts ; razors lose their edge ; thread 
decays ; clothes fall to pieces ; books moulder away and 
drop out of their bindings ; plaster cracks ; timber rots ; 
matting is in shreds." All the time, too, he was devour- 
ing books, without number. The records of his Calcutta 
life, written in half a dozen languages, are scattered, it is 
said, throughout the whole range of classical literature, 
from Hesiod to Macrobius. 

In 1840, two years after his return from Bengal, was 
published his essay on Lord Clive. Busy, as a member 
of the House of Commons, and as Secretary of War, he 
still found time to write essays, and plan his History. 
When a change of government occurred, he became en- 
grossed with his literary work. Tlxe articles on Hastings, 
Frederic, Addison, etc., appeared in pretty quick succes- 
sion. The Lays came out about the same time. The 
terrible paper on Barere a little later — " shade, unrelieved 
by a gleam of light." Soon he was at work 'on his His- 
tory, the first two volumes of which were published early 
in 1849. His method of composition, as disclosed to us 
by Trevelyan, is interesting. "As soon as he had got 
into his head all the information relating to any partic- 
ular episode in his History, he would sit down and write 
off the whole story at a headlong pace, sketching in the 
outlines under the genial and audacious impulse of a first 
conception, and securing in black and white each idea, 
and epithet, and turn of phrase, as it flowed straight from 
his busy brain to his rapid fingers. His manuscript, at 
this stage, to the eyes of any one but himself, appeared 
to consist of column after column of dashes and flourishes, 
in which a straight line, with a half-formed letter at each 
end and another in the middle, did duty for a word. . . . 
As soon as he had finished his rough draft, he began to 
fill it in at the rate of six sides of foolscap every morning, 
written in so large a hand, and with such a multitude of 
erasures, that the whole six pages were, on an average, 



86 CHARACTERISTICS. 

compressed into two pages of print. This portion he 
called his ' task,' and he was never quite easy unless he 
completed it daily. . . . He never allowed a sentence to 
pass muster until it was as good as he could make it. He 
thought little of recasting a chapter in order to obtain a 
more lucid arrangement, and nothing whatever of recon- 
structing a paragraph for the sake of one happy stroke 
or apt illustration." He is said to have spent nineteen 
working days over thirty octavo pages, and ended by 
humbly acknowledging that the result was not to his mind. 
" When, at length, after repeated revisions, he had satis- 
fied himself that his writing was as good as he could 
make it, he would submit it to the severest of all tests, 
that of being read aloud to others. . . . Whenever one 
of his books was passing through the press, he extended 
his indefatigable industry and his scrupulous precision to 
the minutest mechanical drudgery of the literary calling. 
There was no end to the trouble that he devoted to mat- 
ters which most authors are only too glad to leave to the 
care and experience of their publisher. He could not 
rest until the lines were level to a hair's breadth, and the 
punctuation correct to a comma ; until every paragraph 
concluded with a telling sentence, and every sentence 
flowed like running water." 

During the later years of his life, Macaulay sent arti- 
cles on Atterbury, Bunyan, Goldsmith, Dr. Johnson, and 
William Pitt, to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The last 
of these, which is little more than seventy octavo pages 
in length, was on hand, he tells us, for three quarters of 
a year. Early in November, 1857, he writes : " The plan 
of a good character of Pitt is forming in my mind ; " and 
on the 9th of August, 1858 : " I finished and sent off the 
paper which has caused me so much trouble. I began 
it, I see, in last November. What a time to have been 
dawdling over such a trifle ! " 

His fame was hardly earned. "Take at hazard," says 



LORD MACAULAY. 87 

Thackeray, "any three pages of the Essays or History, 
and, glimmering below the stream of the narrative, you, 
an average reader, see one, two, three, a half score allu- 
sions to other historic facts, characters, literature, poetry, 
with which you are acquainted. Your neighbor, who has 
his reading and his little stock of literature stowed away 
in his mind, shall detect more points, allusions, happy 
touches, indicating not only the prodigious memory and 
vast learning of this master, but the wonderful industry, 
the honest, humble, previous toil of this great scholar. 
He reads twenty books to write a sentence ; he traveled 
a hundred miles to make a line of description." 

" My task ; " " Did my task ■ " " My task, and some- 
thing over," continually occur in his diary. July 28, 1850, 
he says : " To-morrow I shall begin to transcribe again, 
and to polish. What trouble these few pages will have 
cost me ! " February 6, 1854, he says : " I worked hard 
at altering the arrangement of the first three chapters 
of the third volume. What labor it is to make a toler- 
able book, and how little readers know how much trouble 
the ordering of parts has cost the writer i " In 1858, he 
made this entry : " I read my own writings during some 
hours, and was not ill-pleased on the whole. Yet, alas ! 
how short life, and how long art ! I feel as if I had just 
begun to understand how to write ; and the probability is 
that I have very nearly done writing." The next year, 
the pen dropped from his hand for ever, leaving his great 
" task "-work — his History — unfinished. 

AS A SPEAKER AND AS A TALKER. 

It is as a writer that Lord Macaulay is famous, and it 
is not often that he is thought of as a speaker or as a 
talker. Proverbially, the world is slow to credit any one 
with more than one excellence. The mighty Caesar, even, 
is rarely thought of but as a great general. 

" When I praise an author," Macaulay used to say, " I 



88 CHARACTERISTICS. 

love to give a sample of his wares." It would be a 
pleasure to copy, as it would be to read, samples of Ma- 
caulay's speeches, but there is not room enough for them 
in one short article. Any one of many passages that 
might be produced would give convincing proof of his 
great powers as a speaker. 

When a little child, he had an uncommon way of speak- 
ing, which foretold his future extraordinary power of ex- 
pression. On one occasion a servant blunderingly spilled 
hot coffee over his legs. The hostess, after a while, asked 
him how he was feeling. The little fellow looked up in 
her face, and replied: "Thank you, madam, the agony 
is abated." He had, it is stated, a little plot of ground at 
the back of the house marked out as his own by a row 
of oyster-shells, which a maid one day threw away as 
rubbish. He went straight to the drawing-room, where 
his mother was entertaining some visitors, walked into 
the circle, and said, very solemnly : " Cursed be Sally ; 
for it is written, ' Cursed is he that remove th his neigh- 
bor's landmark.' " In later years, his father was often 
heard to exclaim : " If I had only Tom's power of 
speech ! " 

His first public speech was made when he was not 
twenty-four years old, at the annual anti-slavery meeting 
in London, and all accounts agree in the statement that 
its brilliancy confirmed the reputation he had acquired 
in the debating societies of Cambridge and the metrop- 
olis. The Edinburgh Review described it as " a display 
of eloquence so signal for rare and matured excellence, 
that the most practiced orator may well admire how it 
should have come from one who then for the first time 
addressed a public assembly." His first speech in the 
House of Commons was made five or six years afterward, 
in support of the bill to repeal the civil disabilities of the 
Jews of Great Britain, and his second on Slavery in the 
West Indies. The next year he delivered the first of what 



LORD MACAULAY. 89 

are known as his Reform speeches. When he sat down, 
it is said, the Speaker sent for him, and told him that, in 
all his prolonged experience, he had never seen the House 
in such a state of excitement. Portions of the speech, 
said a distinguished opponent, "were as beautiful as any 
thing I have ever heard or read. It reminded one of the 
old times." The names of Fox, Burke, and Canning, it 
is stated, were during that evening in every body's mouth ; 
and Macaulay overheard with delight a knot of old mem- 
bers illustrating their criticisms by recollections of Lord 
Plunket. It was no easy thing to achieve such extraor- 
dinary success in such a peculiar place. " A place," to 
use Macaulay's own language, "where Walpole succeeded 
and Addison failed ; where Dundas succeeded and Burke 
failed ; where Peel now succeeds and Mackintosh fails ; 
where Erskine and Scarlett were dinner-bells ; where 
Lawrence and Jekyll, the two wittiest men, or nearly so, 
of their time, were thought bores, is surely a very strange 
place." Peel described the speech as a " wonderful flow 
of natural and beautiful language," richly freighted with 
"thought and fancy." Jeffrey said of it: " It was pro- 
digiously cheered, as it deserved, and, I think, puts him 
clearly at the head of the great speakers, if not the de- 
baters, of the House." Cockburn, who sat under the gal- 
lery for twenty-seven hours during the last three nights 
of the Reform bill, pronounced Macaulay's speech to have 
been "by far the best." Mackintosh writes from the 
library of the House of Commons : " Macaulay and Stan- 
ley have made two of the finest speeches ever spoken in 
Parliament." The bill was carried by one vote. In a 
letter to his old friend Ellis, Macaulay gives an animated 
description of the effect of its passage. "If I should 
live fifty years," he says, " the impression of it will be 
as sharp in my mind as if it had just taken place. It 
was like seeing Csesar stabbed in the Senate-house, or 
seeing Oliver taking the mace from the table ; a sight to 



90 CHARACTERISTICS. 

be seen only once, and never to be forgotten." You 
might, he says, have heard a pin drop as Duncannon de- 
clared the result. " Then again the shouts broke out, 
and many of us shed tears. I could scarcely refrain. 
And the jaw of Peel fell; and the face of Twiss was as 
the face of a damned soul ; and Hemes looked like Ju- 
das taking his neck-tie off for the last operation." 

His speeches in behalf of the Jews, the Slaves in the 
West Indies, and the Catholics, must stand as fine speci- 
mens of a high order of eloquence. His whole heart 
was in every word of them. By nature and by education 
he bitterly hated every form of injustice and oppression. 
The orator, it should be remembered, was a son of 
Zachary Macaulay, the philanthropist, one of the chiefs 
of the Clapham sect, and an active associate of Clarkson 
and Wilberforce. The inscription on the pedestal of the 
eminent man's bust in Westminster Abbey characterizes 
him as one " who during forty successive years, partaking 
in the counsels and the labors which, guided by favoring 
Providence, rescued Africa from the woes, and the British 
empire from the guilt, of slavery and the slave-trade, 
meekly endured the toil, the privation, and the reproach, 
resigning to others the praise and the reward." Living 
in the moral atmosphere of such a man, Macaulay imbibed 
his convictions and enthusiasm, and was fully prepared, 
when the time came, to assist in finishing the work which 
the little despised band of reformers had so inauspiciously 
begun. 

His set speeches were of course carefully prepared ; 
yet, it is said, when he rose in his place to take part in a 
discussion which had been long foreseen, he had no notes 
in his hand and no manuscript in his pocket. "If a de- 
bate was in prospect, he would turn the subject over 
while he paced his chamber or tramped along the streets. 
Each thought, as it rose in his mind, embodied itself in 
phrases, and clothed itself in an appropriate drapery of 



LORD MACAULAY. 91 

images, instances, and quotations ; and when, in the 
course of his speech, the thought recurred, all the words 
which gave it point and beauty spontaneously recurred 
with it." 

" A torrent of words," said a critical listener, " is the 
only description of Macaulay's style, when he has warmed 
into speed. And such words ! " " In all probability," 
said another, " it was that fullness of mind, which broke 
out in many departments, that constituted him a born 
orator. Vehemence of thought, vehemence of language, 
vehemence of manner, were his chief characteristics. 
The listener might almost fancy he heard ideas and words 
gurgling in the speaker's throat for priority of utterance. 
There was nothing graduated or undulating about him. 
He plunged at once into the heart of the matter, and 
continued his loud resounding pace from beginning to 
end, without halt or pause." When highly excited in 
speech, his mind might have been likened — as somebody 
has compared Napoleon's at times — to "a volcano, sur- 
charged with molten granite." Of his most tremendous 
bursts might have been said what Jeffrey once said of 
Chalmers' eloquence, — "he buried his adversaries under 
the fragments of burning mountains." 

As a .talker, Macaulay must have been very extraordi- 
nary, judging even from the accounts of associate talkers, 
who, wanting their own share in the conversation, found 
it difficult to give due credit to a brilliant competitor. 
Crabb Robinson met him at a dinner-party, about the 
time he began to be famous, and described him in his 
diary as " very eloquent and cheerful. Overflowing with 
words, and not poor in thought. Liberal in opinion, 
but no radical. He seems a correct as well as a full 
man. He showed a minute knowledge of subjects not 
introduced by himself." A high compliment, certainly, to 
be paid by one wit to another. Sumner, the first time 
he was in England, dined with Macaulay. He speaks of 



92 CHARACTERISTICS. 

" the incessant ringing of Macaulay's voice," in contrast 
with Bulwer's "lisping, slender, and effeminate tones." 
Altogether, he thought Macaulay " oppressive." Perhaps, 
bred under Puritan influence, and imbibing some of the 
same tastes and convictions, they both wanted to talk of 
the same things at the same time. Sydney Smith, we 
suspect, was a little inclined to disparage him for a like 
reason. With such great conversers as Rogers, Luttrell, 
Sydney Smith, Tom Moore, Mackintosh, and Conversa- 
tion Sharp, it was a bitter thing to be put out in conver- 
sation. Any thing might be forgotten before that. Hardly 
any loss was more serious, for the time being, than the 
loss of opportunity to say a good thing. He was a favor- 
ite at Holland House. Lady Holland, we know, listened 
to him with unwonted deference, and scolded him with a 
circumspection that was in itself a compliment. Rogers 
spoke of him with friendliness, and to him with positive 
affection. Sharp treated him with great kindness and 
consideration. For the space of three seasons, we are 
informed, he dined out almost nightly, and spent many 
of his Sundays in the suburban mansions of his friends. 
It would have been interesting to have heard him converse 
with Talleyrand, at Holland House, about Metternich and 
Cardinal Mazarin. If some Boswell had followed him 
about, what an interesting book we should have had ! 
Lord Carlisle, in his journal, mentions having met Ma- 
caulay at a dinner-party. " Never," he says, " were such 
torrents of good talk as burst and sputtered over from 
Macaulay and Hallam." He notes another occasion when 
he breakfasted with Macaulay in his rooms at the top of 
the Albany — their walls covered with seven to ten thou- 
sand books. Macaulay's conversation, he says, "ranged 
the world." 

" If a company of giants were got together," says 
Thackeray, in one of his Roundabout Papers, "very 
likely one or two of the mere six-feet-six people might be 



LORD MACAULAY. 93 

angry at the incontestable superiority of the very tallest 
of the party ; so I have heard some of the London wits, 
rather peevish at Macaulay's superiority, complain that 
he occupied too much of the talk, and so forth. Now 
that that wonderful tongue is to speak no more, will not 
many a man grieve that he no longer has the chance to 
listen ? To remember the talk is to wonder : to think 
not only of the treasures he had in his memory, but of 
the trifles he had stored there, and could produce with 
equal readiness. . . . Every man who has known him has 
his story regarding that astonishing memory. It may be 
that he was not ill-pleased that you should recognize it ; 
but to those prodigious intellectual feats, which were so 
easy to him, who would grudge his tribute of homage ? " 

Hawthorne, you remember, in one of his English Note- 
Books, speaks of having met Macaulay at Milnes'. " All 
through breakfast," he says, " I had been more and more 
impressed by the aspect of one of the guests, sitting next 
to Milnes. He was a man of large presence, — a portly 
presence, gray-haired, but scarcely as yet aged ; and his 
face had a remarkable intelligence, not vivid nor sparkling, 
but conjoined with great quietude, — and if it gleamed 
or brightened at one time more than another, it was like 
the sheen over a broad surface of sea. There was a 
somewhat careless self-possession, large and broad enough 
to be called dignity ; and the more I looked at him, the 
more I knew that he was a distinguished person, and won- 
dered who. He might have been a minister of state; 
only there is not one of them who has any right to such 
a face and presence. At last, — I do not know how the 
conviction came, — but I became aware that it was Ma- 
caulay, and began to see some slight resemblance to his 
portraits. But I have never seen any that is not wretch- 
edly unworthy of the original. As soon as I knew him, 
I began to listen to his conversation, but he did not talk 
a great deal." 



94 CHARACTERISTICS. 

In one of his letters to his sisters, he speaks of an 
occasion when he dined with the two wits, Rogers and 
Sydney Smith. Two or three sentences are worth quot- 
ing, though a little out of the way, to show how different 
and incompatible they were. " Singly," says Macaulay, 
" I have often seen them ; but to see them both together 
was a novelty, and a novelty not the less curious because 
their mutual hostility is well known, and the hard hits 
which they have given to each other are in every body's 
mouth. They were very civil, however. But I was 
struck by the truth of what Matthew Bramble says in 
Smollett's Humphry Clinker — that one wit in a company, 
like a knuckle of ham in soup, gives a flavor, but two are 
too many. Rogers and Sydney Smith would not come 
into conflict. If one had possession of the company, the 
other was silent ; and, as you may conceive, the one who 
had possession of the company was always Sydney Smith, 
and the one who was always silent was Rogers." The 
conversation of Rogers, he informs us, was remarkably 
polished and artificial. What he said seemed to have 
been long meditated, and might have been published 
with little correction. Sydney talked from the impulse 
of the moment, and his fun was quite inexhaustible. No 
wonder such opposites could never agree. No intellec- 
tual or moral amalgam — not even Macaulay, with all 
his genius and good-nature — could have fused them to- 
gether. 

At the Palace of the Queen his powers of conversation 
were as well known and as fully appreciated as at the 
house of his sisters. A lady who met him frequently at 
the Palace, whether in the character of a cabinet minis- 
ter or of a private guest, said of him : " Mr. Macaulay 
was very interesting to listen to ; quite immeasurably 
abundant in anecdote and knowledge." 

" Years ago," says Thackeray, " there was a wretched 
outcry raised because Mr. Macaulay dated a letter from 



LORD MACAULAY. 



95 



Windsor Castle, where he was staying. Immortal gods ! 
Was this man not a fit guest for any palace in the world ? 
or a fit companion for any man or woman in it } " 

His appearance and bearing in conversation are de- 
scribed as singularly effective. " Sitting bolt upright, his 
hands resting on the arms of his chair, or folded over the 
handle of his walking-stick ; knitting his great eyebrows 
if the subject was one which had to be thought out as he 
went along, or brightening from the forehead downward 
when a burst of humor was coming ; his massive features 
and honest glance suited well with the manly, sagacious 
sentiments which he set forth in his pleasant, sonorous 
voice, and in his racy and admirably intelligible language. 
To get at his meaning, people had never the need to think 
twice, and they certainly had seldom the time. And with 
all his ardor, and all his strength and energy of convic- 
tion, he was so truly considerate toward others, so deli- 
cately courteous with the courtesy which is of the essence, 
and not only in the manner. However eager had been 
the debate, and however prolonged the sitting, no one in 
the company ever had personal reasons for wishing a 
word of his unsaid, or a look or a tone recalled.''' 

Great, however, as were his gifts as a talker and as a 
speaker, he surrendered them all finally to literature. 
"At a period," says his biographer, "when the mere 
rumor of his presence would have made the fortune of 
any drawing-room in London, Macaulay consented to see 
less and less, and at length almost nothing, of general 
society, in order that he might devote all his energies to 
the work which he had in hand. He relinquished that 
House of Commons which the first sentence of his 
speeches hushed into silence, and the first five minutes 
filled to overflowing." He gave up all to devote himself 
to his History. 

AS A MAN. 

Carlyle once said of Macaulay, that he was " an honest, 



g6 CHARACTERISTICS. 

good sort of fellow, made out of oatmeal." In other 
words, that he was of good Scotch stock, and had been 
generously brought up on good air, simple food, and 
sound instruction. The qualities that he had inherited 
and scrupulously cultivated, were genuine, and of the 
highest manhood. The "pith o' sense," and "pride o' 
worth," and books, made him so much a man, and so 
different from other men, that independence was a neces- 
sity to him. If he w T as to be a man, and fight the battle 
of life on his own ground, it must be his, without any 
question of title. Believing that in the hour in which a 
man "mortgages himself to two, or ten, or twenty, he 
dwarfs himself below the stature of one;" and being 
determined that he would not be " cramped and dimin- 
ished of his proportions," the desire, not for riches, but 
for independence, took deep root within him. He felt 
that he had much to say in this world, and would say it, 
without fear or favor. He felt, too, there is reason to 
believe, as a late writer expresses it, that " good work, as 
a rule, is only done by people who have paid their bills. 
Why was Shakespeare so far ahead of all contemporary 
dramatists? Because Shakespeare had the good sense 
to make money, and was therefore able to command the 
market, and write his late works without undue pressure. 
Others could only write in a tavern, or to get out of a 
creditor's clutches. Shakespeare's mind was at ease by 
the consciousness of his comfortable investments at Strat- 
ford. Hamlet was written because Shakespeare was sol- 
vent." 

Just before going to India, Macaulay wrote to Lord 
Lansdowne : " I feel that the sacrifice which I am about to 
make is great. But the motives which urge me to make 
it are quite irresistible. Every day that I live, I become 
less and less desirous of great wealth. But every day 
makes me more sensible of the importance of a compe- 
tence. Without a competence, it is not very easy for a 



LORD MACAULAY. 97 

public man to be honest : it is almost impossible for him 
to be thought so. I am so situated that I can subsist 
only in two ways : by being in office, and by my pen. 
Hitherto literature has been merely my relaxation — the 
amusement of perhaps a month in the year. I have never 
considered it as the means of support. I have chosen 
my own topics, taken my own time, and dictated my own 
terms. The thought of becoming a bookseller's hack ; 
of writing to relieve, not the fullness of the mind, but 
the emptiness of the pocket ; of spurring a jaded fancy 
to reluctant exertion ; of filling sheets with trash merely 
that the sheets may be filled ; of bearing from publishers 
and editors what Dryden bore from Tonson, and what, 
to my own knowledge, Mackintosh bore from Lardner, 
is horrible to me. Yet thus it must be if I should quit 
office. Yet to hold office merely for the sake of emolu- 
ment would be more horrible still. The situation in 
which I have been placed, for some time back, would 
have broken the spirit of many men. It has rather 
tended to make me the most mutinous and unmanage- 
able of the followers of the Government. I tendered my 
resignation twice during the course of the last session. 
I certainly should not have done so if I had been a man 
of fortune." 

Not long after he arrived in India, he wrote familiarly 
to two of his sisters : " Money matters seem likely to 
go on capitally. My expenses, I find, will be smaller 
than I anticipated. The rate of exchange, if you know 
what that means, is very favorable indeed ; and, if I live, 
I shall get rich fast. I quite enjoy the thought of ap- 
pearing in the light of an old hunks who knows on which 
side his bread is buttered ; a warm man ; a fellow who 
will cut up well. This is not a character which the Ma- 
caulays have been much in the habit of sustaining; but 
I can assure you that, after next Christmas, I expect to 
lay up, on an average, about seven thousand pounds a 
7 



98 CHARACTERISTICS. 

year, while I remain in India. At Christmas, I shall 
send home a thousand or twelve hundred pounds for my 
father, and you all. I cannot tell you what a comfort it 
is to me to find that I shall be able to do this. It recon- 
ciles me to all the pains — acute enough, sometimes, God 
knows — of banishment. In a few years, if I live — prob- 
ably in less than five years from the time at which you 
will be reading this letter, — we shall be again together 
in a comfortable, though modest, home ; certain of a good 
fire, a good joint of meat, and a good glass of wine ; with- 
out owing obligations to any body, and perfectly indif- 
ferent, at least as far as our pecuniary interest is con- 
cerned, to the changes of the political world." 

The sacrifice he made for independence was indeed 
great. He wrote to one of his sisters from Calcutta : " I 
have no words to tell you how I pine for England, or 
how intensely bitter exile has been to me, though I hope 
that I have borne it well. I feel as if I had no other 
wish than to see my country again, and die. Let me as- 
sure you that banishment is no light matter. No person 
can judge of it who has not experienced it. A complete 
revolution in all the habits of life ; an estrangement from 
almost every old friend and acquaintance : fifteen thou- 
sand miles of ocean between the exile and every thing 
that he cares for; all this is, to me at least, very trying. 
There is no temptation of wealth or power which would 
induce me to go through it again." But, back again in 
London, two or three years after his return — his object 
accomplished, — he wrote to Napier: "I can truly say, 
that I have not, for many years, been so happy as I am 
at present. Before I went to India, I had no prospect of 
a change of government, except that of living by my pen, 
and seeing my sisters governesses. In India I was an 
exile. When I came back, I was for a time at liberty; 
but I had before me the prospect of parting in a few 
months, probably forever, with my dearest sister and her 



LORD MACAULAY. 99 

children. That misery was removed ; but I found myself 
in office, a member of a Government wretchedly weak, and 
struggling for existence. Now I am free. I am inde- 
pendent. I am in Parliament, as honorably seated as 
man can be. My family is comfortably off. I have leisure 
for literature, yet I am not reduced to the necessity of 
writing for money. If I had to choose a lot from all that 
are in human life, I am not sure that I should prefer any 
to that which has befallen me. I am sincerely and thor- 
oughly contented." 

To his sisters, especially to Margaret and Hannah, he 
was warmly attached. Although younger than himself 
by ten and twelve years respectively, they were on terms 
of the most intimate companionship with him. After- 
noons he took long walks with them. " We traversed," 
says one of them, " every part of the city, Islington, 
Clerkenwell, and the parks, returning just in time for a 
six o'clock dinner. What anecdotes he used to pour out 
about every street, and square, and alley. There are 
many places I never pass without the tender grace of a 
day that is dead coming back to me. Then, after dinner, 
he always walked up and down the drawing-room between 
us, chatting till tea-time. Our noisy mirth, his wretched 
puns, so many a minute, so many an hour ! Then we 
sung, none of us having any voices, and he, if possible, 
least of all ; but still the old nursery songs were set to 
music and chanted." " When alone with his sisters," 
says Trevelyan, " and, in after years, with his nieces, he 
was fond of settling himself deliberately to manufactur- 
ing conceits resembling those on the heroes of the Trojan 
war which have been thought worthy of publication in 
the collected works of Swift. When walking in London 
[he had Dr. Johnson's passion for the great town] he 
would undertake to give some droll turn to the name of 
every shopkeeper in the street, and, when traveling, to 
the name of every station along the line. At home, he 



100 CHARACTERISTICS. 

would run through the countries of Europe, the States 
of the Union, the chief cities of our Indian Empire, the 
provinces of France, the Prime Ministers of England, or 
the chief writers and artists of any given century ; strik- 
ing off puns, admirable, endurable, and execrable, but 
all irresistibly laughable, which followed each other in 
showers like sparks from flint. Capping verses was a 
game of which he never tired." Such entries as this 
occur in Margaret's diary : " Jan'y 8th, 1832. Yesterday 
Tom dined with us, and staid late. He talked almost 
uninterruptedly for six hours. In the evening he made a 
great many impromptu charades in verse." He read his 
works to them in manuscript, and when they found fault, 
as they often did, with his being too severe upon people, 
he took it with the greatest kindness, and often altered 
what they did not like. After a visit to Holland House, 
he writes to Hannah : " But for all this, I would much 
rather be quietly walking with you : and the great use of 
going to these fine places is to learn how happy it is pos- 
sible to be without them." In another letter to Hannah, 
after speaking of the compliments showered upon him 
by Althorp, Graham, Stanley, Russell, O'Connell, and 
the newspaper press, he says : " My greatest pleasure, in 
the midst of all this praise, is to think of the pleasure 
which my success will give to my father and my sisters. 
It is happy for me that ambition has in my mind been 
softened into a kind of domestic feeling, and that affec- 
tion has at least as much to do as vanity with my wish to 
distinguish myself. This I owe to my dear mother, and 
to the interest which she always took in my childish suc- 
cesses. From my earliest years, the gratification of those 
whom I love has been associated with the gratification of 
my own thirst for fame, until the two have become insep- 
arably joined in my mind." After reciting his engage- 
ments to dine with lords and ladies, every day for a fort- 
night, he writes : " Yet I would give a large slice of my 



LORD MAC AULA Y. 10 1 

quarter's salary, which is now nearly due, to be at the 
Dingle. I am sick of lords with no brains in their heads, 
and ladies with paint on their cheeks, and politics, and 
politicians, and that reeking furnace of a House. As the 
poet says : 

' Oh ! rather would I see this day 
My little Nancy well and merry, 
Than the blue ribbon of Earl Grey, 
Or the blue stockings of Miss Berry.' " 

Writing anxiously to Hannah about her health, he says : 
" I begin to wonder what the fascination is which attracts 
men, who could sit over their tea and their books in their 
own cool, quiet room, to breathe bad air, hear bad 
speeches, lounge up and down the long gallery, and doze 
uneasily on the green benches till three in the morning. 
Thank God, these luxuries are not necessary to me. My 
pen is sufficient for my support, and my sister's company 
is sufficient for my happiness. Only let me see her well 
and cheerful, and let offices in Government and seats in 
Parliament go to those who care for them." Again he 
says : " The Tories are quite welcome to take every thing, 
if they will only leave me my pen and my books, a warm 
fireside, and you chattering beside it. This sort of phil- 
osophy, an odd kind of cross between Stoicism and Epi- 
cureanism, I have learned where most people unlearn all 
their philosophy — in crowded' senates and fine drawing- 
rooms." " There are not ten people in the world whose 
deaths would spoil my dinner ; but there are one or two 
whose deaths would break my heart. The more I see 
of the world, and the more numerous my acquaintance 
becomes, the narrower and more exclusive my affection 
grows, and the more I cling to my sisters, and to one or 
two old tried friends of my quiet days." The marriage 
of Margaret, and his separation from her, were serious 
things to Macaulay. Hannah (Nancy) he took with him 
to India, where she met and married Trevelyan. He 



102 CHARACTERISTICS. 

wrote to Margaret (Mrs. Cropper) from Calcutta : " My 
parting from you almost broke my heart. But when I 
parted from you I had Nancy ; I had all my other rela- 
tions ; I had my friends ; I had my country. Now I have 
nothing except the resources of my own mind, and the 
consciousness of having acted not ungenerously." Next 
came Margaret's death. One of the many painful refer- 
ences he makes to it is in a letter to his dear old friend 
Ellis, nearly a year after the event : " I have but very 
lately begun to recover my spirits. The tremendous blow 
which fell on me at the beginning of this year has left 
marks behind it which I shall carry to my grave. Liter- 
ature has saved my life and my reason. Even now, I dare 
not,, in the intervals of business, remain alone for a min- 
ute without a book in my hand." 

After his departure to India, writes one of his sisters : 
" You can have no conception of the change which has 
come over this household. It is as if the sun had de- 
serted the earth. The chasm Tom's departure has made 
can never be supplied. He was so unlike any other 
being one ever sees, and his visits among us were a sort 
of refreshment which served not a little to enliven and 
cheer our monotonous way of life ; but now day after 
day rises and sets without object or interest, so that 
sometimes I almost feel aweary of this world." 

" He was peculiarly susceptible," says Lady Trevelyan, 
" of the feeling of ennui when in society. He really hated 
staying out, even in the best and most agreeable houses. 
It was with an effort that he even dined out, and few of 
those who met him, and enjoyed his animated conversa- 
tion, could guess how much rather he would have re- 
mained at home, and how much difficulty I had to force 
him to accept invitations and prevent his growing a re- 
cluse. But though he was very easily bored in general 
society, I think he never felt ennui when he was alone, 
or when he was with those he loved. Many people are 



LORD MACAULAY. 103 

very fond of children, but he was the only person I ever 
knew who never tired of being with them. Often has 
he come to our house, at Clapham or in Westbourne 
Terrace, directly after breakfast, and finding me out, he 
dawdled away the whole morning with the children ; and 
then, after sitting with me at lunch, has taken Margaret 
a long walk through the city, which lasted the whole af- 
ternoon. Such days are always noted in his journals as 
especially happy." 

All this of the man who was so severe upon Robert 
Montgomery, Croker, Barere, and others, that his severity 
has become famous. He had no mercy for bad, loose, or 
inaccurate writing. His models were classics. " See," 
he says, referring to Croker, " see whether I do not dust 
that varlet's jacket for him in the next number of the 
Blue and Yellow. I detest him more than cold boiled 
veal." Again he says : " I have, though I say it who 
should not say it, beaten Croker black and blue." Of 
Barere, he wrote to Napier : " If I can, I will make the 
old villain shake, even in his grave." What he said of 
Churchill was perhaps more or less applicable to himself : 
" There was too great a tendency to say with willing ve- 
hemence whatever could be eloquently said." There 
is something in the prolonged pounding he gave Walpole 
that reminds us of Walpole's blow or two at Johnson. 
Bold, too, he was, as well as severe. In his famous re- 
view of Ranke's History of the Popes, " he contrived," 
says one who knew, "to offend all parties — Romanist, 
Anglican, and Genevan." But all the boldness he ever 
evinced would have appeared timidity, and all his severity 
gentleness, if he had once fallen upon 'Brougham, who 
bitterly hated him, and whom Macaulay cordially disliked 
in return, and would have delighted beyond measure, we 
believe, in combating to the death. He was perfectly 
aware of Brougham's jealousies, insincerities, and cruel- 
ties, and would have exhausted upon him all the pro- 



IO4 CHARACTERISTICS. 

digious resources of his genius and passions. " I do not 
think it possible," he said to Ellis, "for human nature, in 
an educated, civilized man — a man, too, of great intel- 
lect — to have become so depraved." " Strange fellow ! " 
he characterized him, more than twenty years afterward. 
" His powers gone. His spite immortal. A dead nettle." 
What a contest there would have been had the two giants 
come together ! 

Of Macaulay's public life and character, Sydney Smith 
expressed the truth in a few words : " I believe Macaulay 
to be incorruptible. You might lay ribbons, stars, garters, 
wealth, title, before him in vain. He has an honest, gen- 
uine love of his country, and the world could not bribe 
him to neglect her interests." 

The last use the great man made of his pen was to sign 
a letter he had dictated, inclosing twenty-five pounds to a 
ooor curate. 



LAMB. 

Some one has said, that to have a true idea of man, 
or of life, one must have stood himself on the brink of 
suicide, or on the door-sill of insanity, at least once. It 
does seem impossible that easy-going people, who have 
been easily prosperous, who have uniformly enjoyed good 
health, who have always been free from distressing care, 
should know at all what is inevitably and perfectly known 
by being between the millstones. "We learn geology," 
says Emerson, "the morning after the earthquake, on 
ghastly diagrams of cloven mountains, upheaved plains, 
and the dry bed of the sea." It is only an experience of 
the awful that fully opens the eyes of the understanding 
upon the dread abysses of extremity and possibility. To 
know life, it is necessary to have struggled hard in the 
midst of it ; to feel for the suffering, we must have suf- 
fered acutely ourselves. " Before there is wine or there 
is oil, the grape must be trodden and the olive must be 
pressed." The sweetest characters, we know, often re- 
sult from the bitterest experiences. The weight of great 
misfortunes, and the perpetual annoyance of petty evils, 
only tend to make them stronger and better. Patience 
and resignation under multiplied ills can hardly be con- 
ceived by those who have only trodden at will, without 
burdens, over safe and pleasant ground in easy sandals. 
They look upon life and inquire, " What would the pos- 
session of a hundred thousand a year, or fame, and the 
applause of one's countrymen, or the loveliest and best- 
beloved woman — of any glory and happiness, or good 



106 CHARACTERISTICS. 

fortune, avail to a man, who was allowed to enjoy them 
only with the condition of wearing a shoe with a couple 
of nails or sharp pebbles inside of it ? " Good men, 
knowledge of the world teaches us, are not easily found 
amongst those who have never known misfortune : " the 
heart must be softened by sufferings, to make it constant, 
firm, patient, and wise." As there are fishes which are 
intended by nature for great sea-depths, so there are hu- 
man beings to whom severe pressure seems to be suited, 
and who seem to thrive best when every weight is upon 
them. Birds of paradise, from the very nature of their 
plumage, cannot fly except against the wind. One of the 
most marvelously beautiful of all the many species of the 
humming-bird is only to be found in the crater of an ex- 
tinguished volcano. 

That Charles Lamb ever contemplated suicide, we do 
not know ; but we do know, that he was, early in life, 
confined in an insane asylum for a short period. Once, 
alas ! he not only stood upon, but passed, the door-sill of 
madness, and was ever after indeed wise in a wisdom 
unknowable but by those who dwell long enough in the 
midst of mental chaos for the impression of the dreadful 
situation ineradicably to infix itself. No wonder, knowing 
what we do of his wretched experiences, the best picture 
we have of him should show to us a face full of all en- 
durable suffering, all possible pain, awful in its expression 
of wretchedness, and looking, for all the world — we can- 
not help saying it — like a skillful limner's painstaking 
study of madness. 

Life very early taught him the bitter lesson that the 
ancient Mexicans taught their children : so soon as a 
child was born they saluted it, " Child, thou art come 
into the world to endure, suffer, and say nothing." Lamb 
endured, and suffered, how long ! and was dumb beyond 
comprehension. When his wretchedness voiced itself, it 
was unconsciously or inevitably. When the burden was 



LAMB. 107 

unbearable, merciless, the cry announcing it was but the 
creak of the timber before breaking — the echo of the 
agony within his soul. 

Is it too much to say, that his peculiar genius was in 
great part a direct result of his supreme wretchedness ? 
His humor, his wit, his wisdom, his very style, seem in- 
deed to be, literally, expression — to have been forced out 
of him by pressure, as juices and oils are forced from 
plants. We know how much mere physical suffering has 
had to do with the most famous productions of literature. 
We know that the Caudle Lectures, which, as social droll- 
eries, set all the world laughing, were written to dictation 
on a bed of sickness, racked by rheumatism. We know 
that Scott dictated that fine love story, the Bride of Lam- 
mermoor, from a bed of torment ; and that so great was 
his suffering that when he rose from his bed, and the 
published book was placed in his hands, he did not recol- 
lect one single incident, character, or conversation it con- 
tained. We know that Heine, for several years preceding 
his death, was a miserable paralytic. All that time he 
lay upon a pile of mattresses, racked by pain and ex- 
hausted by sleeplessness, till his body was reduced below 
all natural dimensions. The muscular debility was such 
that he had to raise the eyelid with his hands when he 
wished to see the face of any one about him ; and thus in 
darkness, he thought, and listened, and dictated, preserv- 
ing to the very last his clearness of intellect, his precision 
of diction, and his invincible humor. The wretchedness 
of Scarron, at whose jests, burlesques, and buffooneries 
all France was laughing, may be guessed from his own 
description. His form, to use his own words, " had be- 
come bent like a Z." " My legs," he adds, "first made 
an obtuse angle with my thighs, then a right, and at last 
an acute angle ; my thighs made another with my body. 
My head is bent upon my chest; my arms are contracted 
as well as my legs, and my fingers as well as my arms. 



108 CHARACTERISTICS. 

I am, in truth, a pretty complete abridgment of human 
misery." His days were passed in a chair with a hood, 
and his wife had to kneel to look in his face. He could 
not be moved without screaming from pain, nor sleep 
without taking opium. Balzac said of him, " I have often 
met in antiquity with pain that was wise, and pain that 
was eloquent ; but I never before saw pain joyous, nor 
found a soul merrily cutting capers in a paralytic frame." 
He continued to jest to the last ; and seeing the by- 
standers in tears, he said, " I shall never, my friends, 
make you weep as much as I have made you laugh." 
Pascal, we know, was pitifully feeble, and constantly in 
pain, at the same time that he " fixed," to use the glowing 
words of Chateaubriand, "the language w r hich Bossuet 
and Racine spoke, and furnished a model of the most 
perfect wit as well as of the closest reasoning ; and in 
the brief intervals of his pain solved by abstraction the 
highest problems of geometry, and threw on paper 
thoughts which breathe as much of God as of man." 
We know, too, that many of Hood's most humorous pro- 
ductions were dictated to his wife, while he himself was 
in bed from distressing and protracted sickness. His 
own family was the only one which was not delighted with 
the Comic Annual, so well thumbed in every house. " We 
ourselves," said his son, "did not enjoy it till the lapse of 
many years had mercifully softened down some of the 
sad recollections connected with it." It is recorded of 
him, that upon a mustard plaster being applied to his at- 
tenuated feet, as he lay in the direst extremity, he was 
heard feebly to remark, that there was "very little meat 
for the mustard." 

Physical suffering having had so much to do with so 
many of the productions of genius, is it hard to believe 
that mental anguish may not have contributed even more 
and to a greater number ? Literature is full of instances 
to enforce the conclusion. Mental wretchednesses of every 



LAMB. IO9 

description connect themselves inseparably with the mem- 
ory of many of the most illustrious names, and with their 
greatest achievements. Curran, for instance, at the very 
time he was one of the most unhappy and melancholy 
of men, was one of the most delightful and wonderful. 
What a talker he was ! Such imagination ! " There 
never was any thing like it," said Byron, "that I ever saw 
or heard of. His published life, his published speeches, 
give you no idea of the man — none at all. He was a 
machine of imagination. The riches of it were exhaust- 
less. I have," said the poet, " heard that man speak more 
poetry than I have ever seen written, though I saw him 
seldom, and but occasionally. I saw him presented to 
Madame de Stael. It was the great confluence between 
the Rhone and the Saone." Cervantes, from all accounts, 
dragged on a most wretched and melancholy existence. 
He was groaning and weeping while all Spain was laugh- 
ing at the adventures of Don Quixote and the wise say- 
ings of Sancho Panza. The great Swift, we know, was 
never known to smile. Butler's private history was but 
a record of his miseries. Burns confessed that his de- 
sign in seeking society was to fly from constitutional mel- 
ancholy. " Even in the hour of social mirth," he tells us, 
"my gayety is the madness of an intoxicated criminal 
under the hands of the executioner." The author of 
John Gilpin said of himself and that humorous poem, 
" Strange as it may seem, the most ludicrous lines I ever 
wrote have been when in the saddest mood, and but for 
that saddest mood, perhaps, would never have been 
written at all." While it was being read by Henderson, 
in London, to large audiences, its author was mad. Jean 
Paul wrote a great part of a comic romance in an agony 
of heart-break from the death of his son. Washington 
Irving completed that most extravagantly humorous of all 
his works — The History of New York — while suffering 
from the death of his sweetheart, which nearly broke his 



110 CHARACTERISTICS. 

heart. The fact, therefore, that the most facetious of all 
Lamb's letters was written in a paroxysm of melancholy, 
amounting almost to madness, does not deserve to be 
called curious, but is only another instance added to the 
list that might easily be extended, if not to the point of 
tediousness, certainly beyond the purposes of this paper. 

The circumstances of Lamb's life were awfully de- 
pressing. Conceive them if you can. Himself, as we 
have said, in a mad-house for a short time at the end of 
his twentieth year ; his sister insane at intervals through- 
out her life ; his mother hopelessly bedridden till killed 
by her daughter in a fit of frenzy j his father pitifully im- 
becile ; his old maiden aunt home from a rich relation's 
to be nursed till she died — all dependent upon him, his 
more prosperous brother declining to bear any part of the 
burden ; his work for more than thirty years distasteful 
and monotonous, and most of it performed at the same 
desk in the same office. Imagine his loneliness during 
all those thirty dreary years, with no one in the vast es- 
tablishment at all congenial to him that we hear of ; in- 
deed we do not remember that he any where refers by 
name to any one employed there with him. Dr. James 
Alexander, describing a visit to the India House, says he 
inquired for Charles Lamb of the doorkeeper, who replied 
he had been there since he was sixteen years old, and 
had never heard of any Mr. Lamb. But the doorkeeper 
of the British Museum knew him very well. 

It is now well-known that Lamb's description of Lovel, 
in one of his essays, is an accurate description of his own 
father. It helps us to a better understanding of himself, 
besides being good enough to read over and over. " I 
knew this Lovel," he says. " He was a man of an in- 
corrigible and losing honesty. A good fellow withal, and 
1 would strike.' In the cause of the oppressed he never 
considered inequalities, or calculated the number of his 
opponents. He once wrested a sword out of the hand of 



LAMB. 1 1 1 

a man of quality that had drawn upon him, and pom- 
meled him severely with the hilt of it. The swordsman 
had offered insults to a female — an occasion upon which 
no odds against him could have prevented the interfer- 
ence of Lovel. He would stand next day bareheaded to 
the same person, modestly to excuse his interference — 
for L. never forgot rank, where something better was not 
concerned. L. was the liveliest little fellow breathing, had 
a face as gay as Garrick's, whom he was said greatly to re- 
semble (I have a portrait of him which confirms it), pos- 
sessed a fine turn for humorous poetry — next to Swift 
and Prior — moulded heads in clay or plaster of Paris to 
admiration, by the dint of natural genius merely ; turned 
cribbage boards, and such small cabinet toys, to perfec- 
tion ; took a hand at quadrille or bowls with equal facility ; 
made punch better than any man of his degree in Eng- 
land ; had the merriest quips and conceits ; and was alto- 
gether as brimful of rogueries and inventions as you could 
desire. He was a brother of the angle, moreover, and 
just such a free, hearty, honest companion as Mr. Izaak 
Walton would have chosen to go a-fishing with. I saw 
him in his old age and the decay of his faculties, palsy- 
smitten, in the last sad stage of human weakness — ' a 
remnant most forlorn of what he was,' — yet even then 
his eye would light up upon the mention of his favorite 
Garrick. He was greatest, he would say, in Bayes — 
'was upon the stage nearly throughout the whole per- 
formance, and as busy as a bee.' At intervals, too, he 
would speak of his former life, and how he came up a 
little boy from Lincoln to go to service, and how his 
mother cried at parting with him, and how he returned, 
after some few years' absence, in his smart new livery, to 
see her, and she blessed herself at the change, and could 
hardly be brought to believe that it was ' her own bairn.' 
And then, the excitement subsiding, he would weep, till 
I have wished that sad second childhood might have a 



112 CHARACTERISTICS. 

mother still to lay its head upon her lap. But the com- 
mon mother of us all' in no long time after received him 
gently into hers." 

The circumstances attending the death of Lamb's 
mother, by the hand of his sister, were reported by the 
coroner : " It appeared, by the evidence adduced, that, 
while the family were preparing for dinner, the young lady 
seized a case-knife, lying on the table, and in a menacing 
manner pursued a little girl, her apprentice, round the 
room. On the calls of her infirm mother to forbear, she 
renounced her first object, and with loud shrieks, ap- 
proached her parent. The child, by her cries, quickly 
brought up the landlord of the house, but too late. The 
dreadful scene presented to him the mother lifeless, 
pierced to the heart, on a chair, her daughter yet wildly 
standing over her with the fatal knife, and the old man, 
her father, weeping by her side, himself bleeding at the 
forehead from the effects of a severe blow he received 
from one of the forks she had been madly hurling about 
the room. . . . The jury, of course, brought in their ver- 
dict — Lunacy." 

Lamb's own account of the dreadful event, to Coleridge, 
is extremely touching : — " My Dearest Friend : White, 
or some of my friends, or the public papers, by this time 
may have informed you of the terrible calamities that 
have fallen on our family. I will only give you the out- 
lines : My poor dear, dearest sister, in a fit of insanity, 
has been the death of her own mother. I was at hand 
only time enough to snatch the knife out of her grasp. 
She is at present in a mad-house, from whence I fear she 
must be moved to an hospital. God has preserved to me 
my senses — I eat and drink, and sleep, and have my 
judgment, I believe, very sound. My poor father was 
slightly wounded, and I am left to take care of him and 
my aunt. . . . Write as religious a letter as possible, but 
no mention of what is gone and done with. With me, 



LAMB. 1 1 3 

* the former things are passed away,' and I have some- 
thing more to do than to feel. . . . Mention nothing of 
poetry. I have destroyed every vestige of past vanities 
of that kind. Do as you please, but if you publish, pub- 
lish mine (I give free leave) without name or initial, and 
never send me a book, I charge you. ... I charge you, 
don't think of coming to see me. Write. I will not see 
you if you come. God Almighty love you and all of us." 

Whenever, we are told, the approach of one of her fits 
of insanity was announced by some irritability or change 
of manner, he would take her under his arm to Hoxton 
Asylum. It was very afflicting to encounter the young 
brother and his sister walking together (weeping together) 
on this painful errand ; Mary herself, although sad, very 
conscious of the necessity for temporary separation from 
her only friend. They used to carry a strait-jacket with 
them. 

Dr. Weddell, in the account of his travels and adven- 
tures in South Africa, speaks of a species of variegated 
woodpecker, called the carpenter. If one is killed, it is 
rare that its mate does not come and place itself beside 
the dead body, as if imploring a similar fate. Such touch- 
ing fidelity on the part of a bird, but feebly and imper- 
fectly suggests the perpetual, unwearying, undying devo- 
tion of Lamb to his poor sister. He was always at her 
side, in any and every extremity, and there was no sacri- 
fice that he did not stand ready to make. Year after year 
for years, he was father, mother, brother, sister, friend, 
nurse, comforter — every thing to her. 

"I do not observe," says Barry Cornwall, "more than 
one occasion on which (being then himself ill) his firm- 
ness seemed altogether to give way. In 1798, indeed, he 
had said, ' I consider her perpetually on the brink of mad- 
ness.' But in May, 1800, his old servant Hetty having 
died, and Mary (sooner than usual) falling ill again, 
Charles was obliged to remove her to an asylum ; and 

8 



114 CHARACTERISTICS. 

was left in the house alone with Hetty's dead body. ' My 
heart is quite sick (he cries), and I don't know where to 
look for relief. My head is very bad. I almost wish that 
Mary were dead.' This was the one solitary cry of an- 
guish that he uttered during his long years of anxiety and 
suffering. At all other times he bowed his head in si- 
lence, uncomplaining." 

To Coleridge he wrote, " Mary will get better again, 
but her constantly being liable to such relapses is dread- 
ful ; nor is it the least of our evils [they were then at 
Pentonville, in the neighborhood of Holborn] that her 
case and all our story is so well known around us. We 
are in a manner marked." To Manning he wrote, about 
the same time, " It is a great object to me to live in town, 
where we shall be much more private, and to quit a house 
and a neighborhood, where poor Mary's disorder, so fre- 
quently recurring, has made us a sort of marked people. 
We can be nowhere private except in the midst of Lon- 
don." 

Sensitive natures, like Lamb's, are wretched under the 
social microscope. Hawthorne, nearly alike sensitive, 
wrote of the Eternal City, " Rome is not like one of our 
New England villages, where we need the permission of 
each individual neighbor for every act that we do, every 
word that we utter, and every friend that we make or 
keep." It is rather a weary thing for any one to live 
under the microscope. In every man's life are there 
not apartments he would have forever locked, the keys 
forever lost, into which he himself never enters but by 
a skeleton ? It is pleasant sometimes to get where no 
one knows you, nor cares a brass farthing what you say 
or do. No one knew r better than Lamb, shrinking from 
microscopic observation, what a perfect place for any 
wretchedness is a great city. 

No man, we imagine, ever, suffered more from compas- 
sion, than Lamb, unless it was Steele. The latter, out of 



LAMB. 115 

his bitter experience called it shrewdly the best disguise 
of malice, and said that the most apposite course to cry 
a man down was to lament him. Lamb had a great dread 
of being lectured, as all sensitive people have naturally. 
A lady, we are told — a sort of social Mrs. Fry — had 
been for some time lecturing him on his irregularities. 
At last, she said : " But, really, Mr. Lamb, I 'm afraid all 
that I 'm saying has very little effect on you. I 'm afraid 
from your manner of attending to it, that it will not do 
you much good." "No, ma'am," said Lamb, "I don't 
think it will. But as all that you have been saying has 
gone in at this ear (the one next her) and out at the 
other, I dare say it will do this gentleman a great deal of 
good," turning to a stranger who stood on the other side 
of him. The advice — ill-timed and ill-applied, no doubt 
— had much the same effect that the whipping had upon 
the German soldier, who laughed all the time he was be- 
ing flogged. When the officer, at the end, inquired the 
cause of his mirth, he broke out into a fresh fit of laugh- 
ter, and cried, " Why, I 'm the wrong man ! " 

Impertinence, or offensive interference of any sort. 
Lamb could not brook. An unpopular head of a depart- 
ment in the India House came to him one day (perhaps 
at the very time he was engaged on one of his inimitable 
essays or letters) and inquired, " Pray, Mr. Lamb, what 
are you about ? " " Forty, next birthday," said Lamb. 
" I don't like your answer," said the man. " Nor I your 
question," was Lamb's reply. 

He did not like to have the epithet "gentle " applied 
to him. Coleridge, in a poem, had characterized him as 
" My gentle-hearted Charles." Lamb replied, " For God's 
sake (I never was more serious), don't make me ridicu- 
lous any more by terming me gentle-hearted in print, or 
do it in better verses. It did well enough five years ago 
when I came to see you, and was moral coxcomb enough 
at the time you wrote the lines, to feed upon such epi- 



Il6 CHARACTERISTICS. 

thets ; but, besides that, the meaning of gentle is equiv- 
ocal at best, and almost always means poor spirited ; the 
very quality of gentleness is abhorrent to such vile trump- 
etings. My sentiment is long since banished. I hope 
my virtues have done sucking. I can scarce think but 
you meant it in joke. I hope you did, for I should be 
ashamed to think you could think to gratify me by such 
praise, fit only to be a cordial to some green-sick son- 
neteer." 

The immediate cause of Lamb's insanity was his love 
for his sweetheart, Alice W., as he delicately calls her. 
He says that his sister would often " lend an ear to his 
desponding, love-sick lay." After he had been in the 
asylum, he writes to Coleridge that his " head ran upon 
him, in his madness, as much almost as on another per- 
son [meaning the dear one] who was the more immediate 
cause of my frenzy." Later, he burned the " little jour- 
nal," as he called it, " of his foolish passion." 

It must have been at about this time that Coleridge had 
a call from Lamb, which he speaks of in a letter to Ma- 
tilda Betham. " I had," he says, " just time enough to 
have half an hour's mournful conversation with him. He 
displayed such fortitude in his manners, and such a rav- 
age of mental suffering in his countenance, that I walked 
off, my head throbbing with long weeping." 

Wretched man ! In his disordered state — a tempest 
of agitation — events sometimes affected him most 
strangely. In a letter to Southey he says, " I was at 
Hazlitt's marriage, and had like to have been turned out 
several times during the ceremony. Any thing awful 
makes me laugh." 

Ah ! poor humanity — in extremity — what are you to 
say of it ? The plague, says Bulwer, breaks out at Flor- 
ence, — all the pious virgins, the religious matrons, and 
even the sacred sisters, devoted to seclusion and God, 
give themselves up in a species of voluptuous delirium to 



LAMB. 117 

the wildest excesses of prostitution and debauch. The 
same pestilence visits Aix, and the oldest courtezans of 
the place rush in pious frenzy to the hospitals, and devote 
themselves to the certain death which seizes those who 
attend upon the sick. 

Yet, who but Lamb could have said so tender a word 
for an unfortunate man as this ? — addressed also to 
Southey : " Your friend John May has formally made 
kind offers to Lloyd of serving me in the India House, 
by the interest of his friend, Sir Francis Baring. It is 
not likely that I shall ever put his goodness to the test 
on my own account, for my prospects are very comfort- 
able. But I know a man, a young man, whom he could 
serve through the same channel, and, I think, would be 
disposed to serve if he were acquainted with his case. 
This poor fellow (whom I know just enough of to vouch 
for his strict integrity and worth) has lost two or three 
employments from illness, which he cannot regain. He 
was once insane, and, from the distressful uncertainty of 
his livelihood, has reason to apprehend a return of that 
malady. He has been for some time dependent on a 
woman whose lodger he formerly was, but who can ill 
afford to maintain him ; and I know that on Christmas 
night last he actually walked about the streets all night, 
rather than accept of a bed, which she offered him, and 
offered herself to sleep in the kitchen ; and in conse- 
quence of that severe cold, he is laboring under a bilious 
disorder, besides a depression of spirits, which incapac- 
itates him from exertion when he most needs it. For 
God's sake, Southey, if it does not go against you to ask 
favors, do it now ; ask it as for me ; but do not do a vio- 
lence to your feelings, because he does not know of this 
application, and will suffer no disappointment." 

You know what he did for John Morgan — Coleridge's 
friend — whose name deserves to go down with the 
Thrales, the Shaftesburys, the Abneys, the Gillmans, the 



1 1 8 CHARACTERISTICS. 

Unwins, and others who have afforded kindly shelter to 
illustrious men of excellence, learning, or genius. Mor- 
gan was the only child of a retired spirit merchant of 
Bristol, who left him a handsome independence. He was, 
according to Cottle, a worthy kind-hearted man, possessed 
of more than an average of reading and good sense ; 
generally respected, and of unpresuming manners. He 
was a great friend and admirer of Coleridge ; deploring 
his habits, and laboring to correct them. Except Mr. 
Gillman there was no individual with whom Coleridge 
lived gratuitously so much, during Morgan's residence in 
London, extending to a domestication of several years. 
When Morgan removed to Calne, in Wiltshire, for a long 
time he gave Coleridge an asylum, and till his affairs, 
through the treachery of others, became involved, Cole- 
ridge, through him, never wanted a home. Morgan, after 
the turn of the wheel of fortune till the day of his death, 
was supported by a subscription, set on foot, and con- 
tributed to — too liberally, no doubt — by Lamb. 

To be taken into Lamb's favor and protection, it was 
said, you had only to get discarded, defamed, and 
shunned by every body else ; and if you deserved this 
treatment, so much the better. " If I may venture so to 
express myself," says Patmore, " there was in Lamb's eye 
a sort of sacredness in sin, on account of its sure ill- 
consequences to the sinner ; and he seemed to open his 
arms and his heart to the rejected and reviled of man- 
kind in a spirit kindred at least with that of the Deity." 

" Take life too seriously, and what is it worth ? " asks 
Goethe, in Egmont. " If the morning wake us to no new 
joys, if in the evening we have no pleasures, is it worth 
the trouble of dressing and undressing ? " Lamb, under 
the mos.t discouraging circumstances, tried always to 
make the best of life. You remember the Spaniard that 
Southey tells us about, who always put on his spectacles 
when about to eat cherries, that they might look bigger 



LAMB. II9 

and more tempting. In like manner Lamb made the 
most of his enjoyments, and though he did not cast his 
eyes away from his troubles, he packed them in as little 
compass as he could for himself, and never let them an- 
noy others. 

What a resource to him Rickman was ! — a clerk in the 
House of Commons, introduced to him by George Dyer. 
"This Rickman," says Lamb, describing him, " lives in 
our Buildings, immediately opposite our house ; the finest 
fellow to drop in o' nights, about nine or ten o'clock — 
cold bread-and-cheese time — just in the wishing time of 
the night, when you wish for some body to come in, with- 
out a distinct idea of a probable any body. Just in the 
nick, neither too early to be tedious, nor too late to sit a 
reasonable time. He is a most pleasant hand ; a fine 
rattling fellow, has gone through life laughing at solemn 
apes ; — himself hugely literate, oppressively full of in- 
formation in all stuff of conversation, from matter of fact 
to Xenophon and Plato — can talk Greek with Porson, 
politics with Thelwall, conjecture with George Dyer, non- 
sense with me, and any thing with any body ; a great 
farmer, somewhat concerned in an agricultural magazine 
— reads no poetry but Shakespeare, very intimate with 
Southey, but never reads his poetry, relishes George 
Dyer, thoroughly penetrates into the ridiculous wherever 
found, understands the first time (a great desideratum in 
common minds) — you need never twice speak to him ; 
does not want explanations, translations, limitations, as 
Professor Goodwin does when you make an assertion ; 
up to any thing • down to every thing ; whatever sapit 
hominem. A perfect man. ... a species in one. A 
new class. . . . The clearest-headed fellow. Fullest of 
matter, with least verbosity." 

And here a word or two about Lamb's friends — mostly 
an odd set of intellectual worthies. Coleridge — deep in 
metaphysical subtleties, or up in the empyrean ; scholarly 



120 CHARACTERISTICS. 

George Dyer — simple-hearted as my Uncle Toby — al- 
ways conjecturing and always absent-minded — at one 
time emptying the contents of his snuff-box into the tea- 
pot, at another walking straight into the river at noonday ; 
Barton — the healthful friend, and good Quaker poet ; 
Hazlitt — passionate . and untamable — with a face as 
pale as marble, yet pointed at as the " pimpled Haz- 
litt " — who never tasted any thing but water, yet was 
held up as an habitual gin-drinker ; Crabb Robinson — 
with the most hospitable of intellects — who had seen 
every thing and every body, and was always entertaining • 
Talfourd — full of law and literature, and ever ready with 
his reason or his rhetoric ; Rickman — bounding, as you 
have seen, as a roe, and as fresh as the morning ; Rough 

— a chronic and incurable borrower, to whom some of 
Lamb's most amusing letters were written ; Manning — 
the most wonderful of all, Lamb said ; Barry Cornwall — 
who wrote sea songs, yet was rarely if ever on the toss- 
ing element — whose poetry, it was said, is a record of the 
extravagances of one who was habitually sober, the au- 
dacities of one who was habitually cautious, the eloquence 
of one who was habitually reserved ;. Godwin — who 
wrote against matrimony and was twice married, and 
while scouting all commonplace duties, was a good hus- 
band and kind father ; Lloyd — an insane poet, who took 
lodgings at a working brazier's shop to distract his mind 
from melancholy and postpone his madness ; Southey — 
a bookworm and a bookmaker — who loved books so 
well that some of his last hours were spent caressing 
them ; De Qnincey — who had made himself famous by 
inimitably confessing to the sin of opium ; Hammond 

— an incomprehensible character, who journalized his 
food, his sleep, and his dreams — who had a conviction 
that he was to have been, and ought to have been, the 
greatest of men, but was conscious in fact that he was 
not — and who said, the chief philosophical value of his 



LAMB. 121 

papers consisted in the fact that they recorded something 
of a mind that was very near taking a station far above 
all that had hitherto appeared in the world; Blake — 
artist, genius, mystic, madman — of whom it was said, 
he possessed the highest and most exalted powers of the 
mind, but not the lower — who could fly, but could not 
walk — who had genius and inspiration, without the pro- 
saic balance-wheel of common sense — who all his life 
was a victim of poverty and privation, but who, in his old 
age, put his hands on the head of a little girl, and said, 
" May God make this world to you, my child, as beautiful 
as it has been to me ; " and Wordsworth — who heard 
and saw in abounding nature what nobody saw or heard 
but himself without his assistance — who loved himself 
chiefly, and disparaged Burns, and even Shakespeare, as 
we shall see ; and Hood — " so grave, and sad, and 
silent " — one of Lamb's youngest friends ; and Cottle, 
the kind old bookseller ; and Munden, his favorite com- 
edian ; and Liston \ and Charles Kemble ; and Morgan ; 
and Jem White, " the drollest of fellows," the author of 
the Falstaff Letters ; and the passionate Thelwall ; and 
Clarkson, the destroyer of the slave-trade ; and Basil 
Montagu, the constant opponent of the judicial inflic- 
tion of death ; and scholarly Barnes, the editor of the 
Times newspaper ; and the turbulent, ambitious Haydon ; 
and the frank-hearted Captain Burney, who voyaged round 
the world with Captain Cook ; and stalwart Allan Cun- 
ningham ; and Cary, " pleasantest of clergymen," who 
"rendered the adamantine poetry of Dante into English ; " 
and the Reverend Edward Irving ; and the easy-going, 
delightful Leigh Hunt ; and ever so many more, only a 
little more obscure, — all of whom were visitors, friends, 
associates, favorites, or pets, of Lamb — walking with 
him in London streets — talking with him in quiet upper 
rooms, all about books and authors, plays and players, 
pictures and artists — any thing about which any one of 



122 CHARACTERISTICS. 

them was interested. Nothing is easier than to gossip 
about these interesting characters, — always interesting 
in themselves, but especially so to us now, on account of 
their acquaintance and association with Lamb. 

His literary work was mostly done for occupation, al- 
though he did hope — occasionally, at least — for consid- 
erable pecuniary remuneration from it. His plays disap- 
pointed him — they did not take with the public. The 
same may be said of his essays. " Present time and 
future," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, " are rivals ; he who 
solicits the one, must expect to be discountenanced by 
the other." Willis, breakfasting at the Temple with a 
friend, met Lamb. He mentioned having bought a 
copy of Elia the last day he was in America, to send as 
a parting gift to a lady. " What did you give for it ? " 
said Lamb. " About seven and sixpence." " Permit 
me to pay you that," said he ; and with the utmost ear- 
nestness he counted out the money upon the table. " I 
never yet wrote any thing that would sell.. I am the pub- 
lishers' ruin." " To be neglected by his contemporaries," 
said Macaulay, speaking of Milton, " was the penalty 
which he paid for surpassing them." 

His literary expedients were many, and some of them 
were very curious. " Coleridge," he says, in a letter to 
Manning, "has lugged me to the brink of engaging to a 
newspaper, and has suggested to me for a first plan, the 
forgery of a supposed manuscript of Burton, the anato- 
mist of melancholy. I have even written the introduc- 
tory letter ; and, if I can pick up a few guineas in this 
way, I feel they will be most refreshing, bread being so 
dear." 

Although he felt the need of money, and was con- 
stantly in some literary employment, he fully realized the 
miseries of subsisting by authorship. " 'T is a pretty 
appendage to a situation like yours or mine," he wrote to 
Barton ; " but a slavery, worse than all slavery, to be a 



LAMB. 123 

bookseller's dependent, to drudge your brains for pots of 
ale, and breasts of mutton, to change your free thoughts 
and voluntary numbers for ungracious task-work. These 
fellows hate us. The reason I take to be, that contrary 
to other trades, in which the master gets all the credit, 
(a jeweler or silversmith for instance,) and the journey- 
man, who really does the fine work, is in the background ; 
in our work the world gives all the credit to us, whom 
they consider as their journeymen, and therefore do they 
hate us, and cheat us, and oppress us, and would wring 
the blood of us out, to put another sixpence in their me- 
chanic pouches." 

The best of his literary achievements, no doubt, are 
owing to the very necessity of occupation. In his isola- 
tion and dreariness and gloom, he wrote and wrote to 
keep his mind from preying on itself. You remember 
the story of the black pin which the lady wore as a 
brooch — repeated some time ago by Holmes in one of 
his happy little speeches. Her husband had been con- 
fined in prison for some political offense. He was left 
alone with his thoughts to torture him. No voice, no 
book, no implement — silence, darkness, misery, sleepless 
self-torment ; and soon it must be madness. All at once 
he thought of something to occupy these terrible unsleep- 
ing faculties. He took a pin from his neckcloth and 
threw it upon the floor. Then he groped for it. It was 
a little object, and the search was a long and laborious 
one. At last he found it, and felt a certain sense of sat- 
isfaction in difficulty overcome. But he had found a great 
deal more than a pin — he had found an occupation, and 
every day he would fling it from him and lose it, and 
hunt for it, and at last find it, and so he saved himself 
from going mad : and you will not wonder that when he 
was set free and gave the little object to which he owed 
his reason and, perhaps, his life, to his wife, she had it 
set round with pearls and wore it next her heart. 



124 CHARACTERISTICS. 

His monotonous, uninteresting, tread-mill work at the 
office, it is easy to understand, became very oppressive 
to him, and finally nearly unendurable. " My head is in 
such a state from incapacity for business," wrote he to 
Miss Betham, " that I certainly know it to be my duty 
not to undertake the veriest trifle in addition. I hardly 
know how I can go on. I have tried to get some redress 
by explaining my health, but with no great success. No 
one can tell how ill I am because it does not come out to 
the exterior of my face, but lies in my skull deep and in- 
visible. I wish I was leprous, and black-jaundiced skin- 
over, and that all was as well within as my cursed looks. 
You must not think me worse than I am. I am deter- 
mined not to be over-set, but to give up business rather, 
and get 'em to allow me a trifle for services past. O that 
I had been a shoemaker or a baker, or a man of large 
independent fortune. O darling laziness ! heaven of Ep- 
icurus ! Saints' Everlasting Rest ! that I could drink vast 
potations of thee through unmeasured Eternity — Otium 
cum vel sine dignitate. Scandalous, dishonorable, any 
kind of repose. I stand not upon the dignified sort. 
Accursed, damned desks, trade, commerce, business. In- 
ventions of that old original busy-body, brain-working 
Satan — Sabbathless, restless Satan. A curse relieves : 
do you ever try it ? " 

In a letter to Barton he thus wails out his distresses: 
" Of time, health, and riches, the first in order is not last 
in excellence. Riches are chiefly good, because they give 
us Time. What a weight of wearisome prison-hours have 
I to look back and forward to, as quite cut out of life ! 
and the sting of the thing is, that for six hours every day 
I have no business which I could not contract into two, 
if they would let me work task-work." 

But, let us say, for the " weight of wearisome prison- 
hours," we should never have had his precious letters. To 
Walter Wilson, one of the friends of his youth, he wrote : 



LAMB. 125 

" I have a habit of never writing letters but at the office ; 
'tis so much time cribbed out of the company." He 
sometimes spent a week at a time in elaborating a single 
humorous letter. He was hunting the brooch. 

Release came at length, but it was no better with him. 
He found no-work worse even than over-work. To Bar- 
ton he wrote : " I pity you for over-work, but, I assure 
you, no work is worse. The mind preys on itself, the 
most unwholesome food. I bragged formerly that I could 
not have too much time. I have a surfeit. With but few 
years to come, the days are wearisome. But weariness is 
not eternal. Something will shine out to take the load 
off that flags me, which is at present intolerable. I have 
killed an hour or two in this poor scrawl." 

As to his indulgences, regrets, and indecision, he has 
spoken for himself. He wrote to Manning, "I have been 
ill more than a month, with a bad cold, which comes upon 
me (like a murderer's conscience) about midnight, and 
vexes me for many hours. . . . I am afraid I must leave 
off drinking." To Hazlitt he said, at the end of a letter, 
" I am going to leave off smoke. In the meantime I am 
so smoky with last night's ten pipes, that I must leave 
off." 

Ah ! these medicines for the mind. Easily indulged, 
bitterly lamented, hardly avoided. In such cases as poor 
Lamb's, a sentence from one of his own favorite authors 
is peculiarly fitting : " In speaking of the dead, so fold 
up your discourse that their virtues may be outwardly 
shown, while their vices are wrapped up in silence." " He 
shall be immortal," said old Thomas Fuller, " who liveth 
to be stoned by one without fault." 

He drank wine only during dinner — - none after it. 
Over him, at one period of his life, " there passed regu- 
larly," says De Quincey, " after taking wine, a brief 
eclipse of sleep. It descended upon him as softly as a 
shadow. In a gross person, laden with superfluous flesh, 



126 CHARACTERISTICS. 

and sleeping heavily, this would have been disagreeable ; 
but in Lamb, thin even to meagreness, spare and wiry as 
an Arab of the desert, or as Thomas Aquinas, wasted by 
scholastic vigils, the affection of sleep seemed rather a 
net-work of aerial gossamer than of earthly cobweb — 
more like a golden haze falling upon him gently from the 
heavens than a cloud exhaling upwards from the flesh. 
Motionless in his chair as a bust, breathing so gently as 
scarcely to seem certainly alive, he presented the image 
of repose midway between life and death, like the repose 
of sculpture ; and to one who knew his history, a repose 
affectingly contrasting with the calamities and internal 
storms of his life. I have heard more persons," con- 
tinues De Quincey, "than I can now distinctly recall, 
observe of Lamb when sleeping, that his countenance in 
that state assumed an expression almost seraphic, from 
its intellectual beauty of outline, its childlike simplicity 
and its benignity. It could not be called a transfigu- 
ration that sleep had worked in his face ; for the features 
wore essentially the same expression when waking ; but 
sleep spiritualized that expression, exalted it, and also 
harmonized it." 

It was Coleridge, who, after smoking tobacco after 
dinner, went to sleep on a sofa, where the company found 
him, to their no small surprise, which was increased to 
wonder, when he started up of a sudden, and rubbing his 
eyes, looked about him, and launched into a three hours' 
description of the third heaven, of which he had had a 
dream. 

All accounts represent Lamb as one of the most punc- 
tual of men, although he never carried a watch. A friend 
observing the absence of this usual adjunct of a business 
man's attire, presented him with a new gold one, which 
he accepted (no doubt reluctantly) and carried for one 
day only, A colleague asked him what had become of 
it. " Pawned," was the reply. He had actually pawned 



LAMB. 127 

the watch, finding it a useless encumbrance. Nobody- 
knows how much his necessities had to do with that man- 
ner of disposing of the article ; or perhaps pride, which, 
you remember, made proud old Sam Johnson reject the 
new shoes which an officious or inconsiderate friend had 
placed at his chamber door. 

Lamb was never introduced to Scott ; but we are told 
he used to speak with gratitude and pleasure of the cir- 
cumstances under which he saw him once in Fleet-street. 
A man, in the dress of a mechanic, stopped him just at 
Inner Temple-gate, and said, touching his hat, "I beg 
your pardon, sir, but perhaps you would like to see Sir 
Walter Scott; that is he just crossing the road;" and 
Lamb stammered out his hearty thanks to his truly hu- 
mane informer. 

He literally loved books, and every thing pertaining to 
them. Sometimes — in a way scarcely discernible — he 
would kiss a volume of Burns ; as he would also a book 
by Chapman, or Sir Philip Sidney, or any other which he 
particularly valued. " I have seen him," said Procter, 
" read out passages from the Holy Dying and the Urn 
Burial, and express in the same way his devotion and 
gratitude." 

We all know his supreme devotion to Shakespeare. 
In a letter to Talfourd, he says that Wordsworth, who 
worshiped nobody but himself, affected to slight Shake- 
speare — said he was a clever man, but his style had a 
great deal of trick in it, and that he could imitate him if 
he had a mind to. " So you see," said Lamb, " there 's 
nothing wanting but the mind." 

Of Lamb's pathos, and deep religious feeling, we give 
one interesting example, recorded by Hazlitt. Speaking, 
in conversation, of Judas Iscariot, Lamb said : " I would 
fain see the face of him, who, having dipped his hand in 
the same dish with the Son of Man, could afterward be- 
tray him. I have no conception of such a thing ; nor 



128 CHARACTERISTICS. 

have I ever seen any picture (not even Leonardo's very- 
fine one) that gave me the least idea of it." ..." There 
is only one other person I can ever think of after this," 
continued Lamb ; but without mentioning a name that 
once put on a semblance of mortality. " If Shakespeare 
was to come into the room, we should all rise up to meet 
him ; but if that person was to come into it, we should 
all fall down and try to kiss the hem of his garment." 

" Lamb's essays, the gossip of creative genius," says 
an acute critic, " are of a piece with the records of his 
life and conversation. Whether saluting his copy of 
Chapman's Homer with a kiss, — or saying a grace before 
reading Milton, — or going to the theatre to see his own 
farce acted, and joining in the hisses of the pit when it 
fails, — or eagerly wondering if the Ogles of Somerset 
are not descendants of King Lear, — or telling Barry 
Cornwall not to invite a lugubrious gentleman to dinner 
because his face would cast a damp over a funeral, — or 
giving as a reason why he did not leave off smoking, the 
difficulty of finding an equivalent vice, — or striking into 
a hot controversy between Coleridge and Holcroft, as to 
whether man as he is, or man as he is to be, is preferable, 
and settling the dispute by saying, ' Give me man as he 
is not to be,' — or doing some deed of kindness and love 
with tears in his eyes and a pun on his lips, — he is 
always the same dear, strange, delightful companion and 
friend. He is never — the rogue — without a scrap of 
logic to astound common sense. ' Mr. Lamb,' says the 
head clerk at the India House, ' you come down very 
late in the morning ! ' ' Yes, sir,' Mr. Lamb replies, ' but 
then you know I go home very early in the afternoon ! ' " 

When reminded by his sister of the days when they 
were poor, and capable of enjoying every little treat with 
the keenest relish, so different from the days when they 
were rich, stately and dull, he said, "Well, Bridget, since 
we are in easy circumstances, we must just endeavor to put 



LAMB. 129 

up with it." On a certain occasion he blandly proposed 
to his friend who offered to wrap up for him a bit of old 
cheese which he had seemed to like at dinner, to let him 
have a bit of string with which he could probably " lead 
it home." He said to Coleridge, " You are one of the 
most perfect of men, with only this one slight fault, that 
if you have any duty to do, you never do it." You re- 
member his objection to brandy-and-water, — " It spoiled 
two good things." Crabb Robinson, just called to the 
bar, told Lamb exultingly, that he was retained in a cause 
in the King's Bench. " Ah," said Lamb, " the great first 
cause, least understood." Some one spoke of a Miss 
Pate, when Lamb inquired if she was any relation of 
Mrs. John Head of Ipswich. A person in his company 
said something about his grandmother. " Was she a tall 
woman ? " said Lamb. " I don't know ; no. Why do 
you ask ? " " Oh, mine was ; she was a granny dear." 
Running on ludicrously about some lady who had died of 
love for him, he said, he " was very sorry, but we could 
not command such inclinations." A lady who had been 
visiting in the neighborhood of Ipswich, on her return 
could talk of nothing else but the beauty of the country 
and the merits of the people. Lamb remarked that she 
was " Suffolk-ated." Like Dr. Johnson, he disliked the 
country. " A garden," he said, " was the primitive prison, 
till man, with Promethean felicity and boldness, luckily 
sinned himself out of it." One of his odd sayings is re- 
ported by Macready, — that " the last breath he drew in 
he wished might be through a pipe and exhaled in a pun." 
You have heard of his defense of lying, related by Leigh 
Hunt, that " Truth was precious, and not to be wasted on 
everybody." " Hang the age," he wrote after one of his 
literary failures, " I will write for antiquity." " One can- 
not bear," he said, " to pay for articles he used to get for 
nothing. When Adam laid out his first penny for non- 
pareils at some stall in Mesopotamia, I think it went hard 



130 CHARACTERISTICS. 

with him, reflecting upon his old goodly orchard, where 
he had so many for nothing." " The water-cure," he said, 
" is neither new nor wonderful, but it is as old as the 
Deluge, which, in my opinion, killed more than it cured." 

But Lamb's " witty and curious sayings," says Talfourd, 
" give no idea of the general tenor of his conversation, 
which was far more singular and delightful in the traits, 
which could never be recalled, than in the epigrammatic 
turns which it is possible to quote. It was fretted into 
perpetual eddies of verbal felicity and happy thought, 
with little tranquil intervals reflecting images of exceed- 
ing elegance and grace." 

His serious conversation, like his serious writing, is 
said to have been his best. Yet no one, it is stated, " ever 
stammered out such fine, piquant, deep, eloquent things 
in half-a-dozen half sentences ; his jests scald like tears, 
and he probes a question with a play on words." 

"Charles Lamb is gone," lamented De Quincey ; "his 
life was a continued struggle in the service of love the 
purest, and within a sphere visited by little of contempo- 
rary applause. Even his intellectual displays won but a 
narrow sympathy at any time, and in his earlier period 
were saluted with positive derision and contumely on the 
few occasions when they were not oppressed by entire 
neglect. But slowly all things right themselves. All 
merit, which is founded in truth, and is strong enough, 
reaches by sweet exhalations in the end a higher sensory ; 
reaches higher organs of discernment, lodged in a selecter 
audience. But the original obtuseness or vulgarity of 
feeling that thwarted Lamb's just estimation in life, will 
continue to thwart its popular diffusion. There are even 
some that continue to regard him with the old hostility. 
And we, therefore, standing by the side of Lamb's grave, 
seemed to hear, on one side, (but in abated tones,) strains 
of the ancient malice — ' This man, that thought himself 
to be somebody, is dead — is buried — is forgotten ! ' and, 






LAMB. 131 

on the other side, seemed to hear ascending, as with the 
solemnity of an anthem — ' This man, that thought him- 
self to be nobody, is dead — is buried ; his life has been 
searched ; and his memory is hallowed forever ! ' " 



VI. 

BURNS. 

A distinguished gentleman asked a poor man, whom 
he overtook on a visit to the birth-place of Robert Burns, 
— " Can you explain to me what it is that makes Burns 
such a favorite with you all in Scotland? Other poets 
you have, and great ones, but I do not perceive the same 
instant flash, as it were, of an electric feeling when any 
name is named but that of Burns." " I can tell you," 
said the man, " what it is. It is because he had the heart 
of a man in him. He was all heart and all man ; and 
there 's nothing, at least in a poor man's experience, 
either bitter or sweet, which can happen to him, but a 
line of Burns springs into his mouth, and gives him 
courage and comfort if he needs it. It is like a second 
Bible." 

The reply of the peasant explains, in a few words, the 
popularity and growing fame of the poet. Everywhere, 
wherever men live and Burns is known, he is and will be, 
we believe, the acknowledged poet of humanity. Scotch- 
men especially, — on every spot of civilized earth, the 
same as in Scotland, — love him and quote him, and ever 
will love and quote him, particularly in every extremity 
of ill-fortune. He was the one exceptional fearless man, 
conceived by one of his countrymen, who had uttered 
feelings and thoughts participated in by the whole human 
race, and was the mouth of a dumb humanity. 

When a very young man it was our good fortune to re- 
ceive occasional nocturnal visits from an itinerant Scotch 
clock-tinker, who highly entertained us with readings and 



BURNS. I33 

recitations from Burns. He was very poor, but seemed 
content with the very scanty living that his humble occu- 
pation brought him. His figure we can see now, in all 
its proportions, as we saw it then, by the light of a tallow 
candle, in a little upper room in an Ohio village. His 
head, especially, is vividly in memory. It was colossal, 
in comparison with common heads, and would have been 
picked out from an hundred thousand as in every way re- 
markable. It was one of those two-storied heads that 
Holmes talks so suggestively about, with the advantage 
or disadvantage of having its upper story most commo- 
dious and best occupied. The top of it rose like Walter 
Scott's, and his brow had the expression that Socrates' 
had, as shown in the bust we have of the philosopher. 
His face, though rather a hard one in repose, warmed 
and glowed under the inspiration of his beloved poet, as 
the great Stockton's did in the sublime passages of his 
sermons. The subtlest meanings were echoed by his 
varying emphasis ; and responsive tears flowed down his 
weather-beaten cheeks. When he gave a convivial song, 
your ear caught the resounding laughter ; when he recited 
a love ditty, you heard the 

" Youthful, loving, modest pair, 
In other's arms breathe out the tender tale, 
Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents the evening gale ; " 

when he read a pitiless satire, you saw the miserable pre- 
tender writhing under the poet's lash ; when he repeated 
a passage full of all humanity and Christian charity, the 
pathetic tenderness of his accents stirred the very foun- 
tains of feeling ; when he read a lamentation upon pov- 
erty, you understood at once the reconcilement the poet 
so feelingly expresses of penury with death ; and when 
he sang, with prodigious emphasis and spirit, that best of 
all war-songs, Bruce's Address, you felt the truth of the 
tradition, that the famous air was indeed the hero's march 
at the battle of Bannockburn, and that the words were 



134 CHARACTERISTICS. 

the veritable language addressed by the gallant royal 
Scot to his heroic followers on that eventful morning. 
The honest old man, who was so kind as to seek us out 
in that solitary upper room, always met with a generous 
welcome, a warm fire, and a pot of good ale from Father 
Bowers', which helped him, for the time being, to forget 
his patches and his hard lot, and to 
" Snatch a taste 
Of truest happiness/' 

Burns, to him — the good clock-tinker — was indeed " like 
a second Bible." 

The learned Judge Rodgers once related to us a death- 
bed incident of a neighbor of his, — another poor, honest 
Scotchman, a woodsawyer, — whose inspiration and sol- 
ace, all through his hard life, had been Scotia's great 
poet. The good man, worn out and weary, was told by 
his physician that his last hour had come — that he must 
soon die. He received the announcement philosoph- 
ically ; and after naming a few things for which he ex- 
pressed a desire to live, he said to the judge — about the 
last thing he said on earth — " Yes," (with a glowing face 
and a grasp of the hand,) " for these things I should like 
to live ; but — but — judge " (they had many a time 
read the poet together,) — "I shall see — Burns ! " To 
the honest woodsawyer also, Burns was "like a second 
Bible." 

In the Central Park, New York, is a piece of statuary 
(removed, we believe, from its conspicuous place, on ac- 
count of injury by the weather, and suffering somewhat 
by fire in the building where it was placed for protection) 
representing the meeting of two friends — Scotchmen. 
The figures, as we remember them, are about half nat- 
ural size, cut in light-colored sandstone. Traveling-bag, 
hat, and dog, are hard by. The friends are seated at a 
table, and are taking 

" A cup o' kindness yet, 
For auld lang syne." 



BURNS. 135 

And they are grasping hands, — the whole illustrating the 

verse — 

" An' here 's a hand, my trusty here, 
An' gie 's a hand o' thine ; 
An' we '11 tak' a right guid willie-waught, 



Happy the sculptor so fortunate as to choose a subject 
expressing the friendly feeling of all mankind ; especially 
happy in wedding his art to Burns' immortal verse. Go 
when you would, early or late, you always found a rapt 
crowd surrounding the interesting work. 

All his life in the jaws of need, Burns knew how to 
feel for the poor and poverty-stricken. The circum- 
stances even of his birth, were wretched. While his 
mother was yet on the straw, the miserable clay cottage 
fell above her and the infant bard, who both narrowly 
escaped, first being smothered to death, and then of being 
killed by cold, as they were conveyed through frost and 
snow by night to another dwelling. Every day the pov- 
erty of the family increased. The cattle died, the crops 
failed, debts accumulated. They lived so sparingly that 
butchers'-meat was nearly unknown to the family for 
years. The poet describes his life, until his sixteenth 
year, as "the cheerless gloom of a hermit, with the un- 
ceasing moil of a galley-slave." " Stubborn, ungainly 
integrity, and headlong ungovernable irascibility," inter- 
fered seriously with his father's success in the world ; 
they made him poor and kept him so. At the age of 
twenty-three Robert set out for himself. He "joined a 
flaxdresser in a neighboring town to learn his trade. 
This was an unlucky affair, and, to finish the whole, as 
we were giving," he says, " a welcome to the New Year, 
the shop took fire and burnt to ashes, and I was left like 
a true poet, not worth a sixpence." And so all the way 
through \ he had little of thrift at any time. His business 
enterprises failed ; nothing he touched turned into gold. 



136 CHARACTERISTICS. 

The pictures he drew were of life as he had seen it and 
felt it. He had experienced its ills, and had realized their 
benefits. Who but one who had known misfortunes could 
have said of them so wisely ? — 

" I, here, wha sit, ha'e met wi' some, 

An 's thankfu' for them yet. 

They gie the wit of age to youth ; 

They let us ken oursel' ; 
They mak' us see the naked truth, 
The real guid and ill. 

Though losses and crosses 
Be lessons right severe, 
There 's wit there, ye '11 get there, 
Ye '11 find nae other where." 

Who but one who had himself known " the miseries of 
man " could so sympathizingly remember and immortalize 
an old granduncle, with whom his mother lived while in 
her girlish years ? The good old man was long blind ere 
he died ; during which time his highest enjoyment was 
to sit down and cry, while the poet's mother would sing 
the simple old song of the Life and Age of Man. From 
that pitiful scene in real life, and from his own bitter 
experiences, he produced those immortal lines — so con- 
solatory to poverty and wretchedness : — 

" O Death ! the poor man's dearest friend — 

The kindest and the best ! 
Welcome the hour my aged limbs 

Are laid with thee at rest ! 
The great, the wealthy, fear thy blow, 

From pomp and pleasure torn ; 
But, oh ! a blest relief to those 

That weary-laden mourn ! " 

George Sand, in the introduction to one of her novels, 
has been looking at an engraving of Holbein's Laborer. 
" An old, thick-set peasant, in rags, is driving his plow in 
the midst of a field. All around spreads a wild land- 
scape, dotted with a few poor huts. The sun is setting 
behind a hill ; the day of toil is nearly over. It has been 



BURNS. 137 

hard; the ground is rugged and stony; the laborer's 
horses are but skin and bone, weak and exhausted. There 
is but one alert figure, the skeleton Death, who with a 
whip, skips nimbly along at the horse's side and urges the 
team. Under the picture is a quotation in old French, 
to the effect that after the laborer's life of travail and 
service, in which he has to gain his bread by the sweat of 
his brow, here comes Death to fetch him away. And 
from so rude a life does Death take him, says George 
Sand, that Death is hardly unwelcome ; and in another 
composition by Holbein, where men of almost every con- 
dition — popes, sovereigns, lovers, gamblers, monks, sol- 
diers — are taunted with their fear of Death, and do in- 
deed see his approach with terror, Lazarus alone is easy 
and composed, and sitting on his dunghill at the rich 
man's door, tells Death that he does not mind him." 
What a picture the poet makes of 

" Age and Want, oh ! ill-matched pair ! " 

further back in the poem last quoted. See ! 

" On the edge of life, 
With cares and sorrows worn ; 
Then Age and Want — oh ! ill-matched pair ! — 
Show man was made to mourn." 

Dr. Hooker, a traveler in Thibet, describes it as a 
mountainous country, and inconceivably poor. There 
are no plains save flats in the bottom of the valleys, and 
the paths lead over lofty mountains. Sometimes, when 
the inhabitants are obliged from famine to change their 
habitations in winter, the old and feeble are frozen to 
death standing and resting their chins on their staves; 
remaining as pillars of ice, to fall only when the thaw of 
the ensuing spring commences ! — Ah ! 

" Age and Want — oh ! ill-matched pair ! " 
a terrible illustration : too terrible to be contemplated. 
It proves, that in life there are extremities of distress and 



138 CHARACTERISTICS. 

wretchedness inconceivable, even to poetic fancy. Dante, 
amongst the damned, saw nothing more dreadful. 

"We talk," said Douglas Jerrold, "of the intemper- 
ance of the poor ■ why, when we philosophically consider 
the crushing miseries that beset them — the keen suffer- 
ing of penury, and the mockery of luxury and profusion 
with which it is surrounded — the wonder is, not that 
there are so many who purchase temporary oblivion of 
their misery, but that there are so few." 

Living in London streets accounts for the younger 
Weller's shrewdness ; but the pretended advantages of 
poverty are not to the poor themselves so easy to see, 
nor so pleasant to contemplate. If success hath crowned 
the struggle, the battle may be calculatingly, perhaps com- 
placently, remembered. " I would not," said Jean Paul, 
" for any money, have had money in my youth ; " but 
Jean Paul, no doubt, when he wrote the quaint words, 
was looking back over the rugged way to eminence at- 
tained. Looking up at the precipitous, jagged path, he 
would have cried out in quite other words, if not too 
dumb by despairing discouragement to utter them. 

" Moralists tell you," said Sydney Smith, " of the evils 
of wealth and station, and the happiness of poverty. I 
have been very poor the greatest part of my life, and 
have borne it as well, I believe, as most people, but I can 
safely say that I have beeu happier every guinea I have 
gained." 

The advantages of poverty, at best but remote and 
fortuitous, are sometimes subject to facetious illustration. 
For instance, it is said that amongst the higher classes in 
Constantinople, the mortality is out of proportion great, 
owing to two facts ; first, whenever a person is unwell he 
calls in a doctor, and the doctor as sure as fate calls in a 
barber, and has the patient bled ; then, between doctors, 
barbers, bleedings, and leechings, the patient stands a 
fair chance of being soon carried to the burying-ground. 
Poor folks cannot afford all this expense, and they live. 






BURNS. 139 

Asa, King of Judah, Bible readers remember, " was 
diseased in his feet, until his disease was exceeding great : 
yet in his disease he sought not to the Lord, but to the 
physicians. And Asa slept with his fathers." 

No man ever existed who better understood the uses 
of money than Burns ; else could he have written those 
oft-quoted lines ? They occur in The Epistle to a Young 
Friend, — Mr. Andrew H. Aikin of Ayr, to whose father 
the Cotter's Saturday Night is inscribed. Andrew is said 
to have profited by the advice, as he lived and died a 
prosperous man. Better did he " reck the rede than ever 
did the adviser." 

" To catch dame Fortune's golden smile, 
Assiduous wait upon her ; 
And gather gear by ev'ry wile 
That 's justified by honor ; 
Not for to hide it in a hedge, 
Nor for a train attendant, 
But for the glorious privilege 
Of being independent." 

Sir James Mackintosh returned to England from India 
in broken health. He had enjoyed opportunities for ac- 
cumulating a competency. He was judge of the admi- 
ralty court, besides being recorder of Bombay. " He had 
been," he said, "to El Dorado; but he had forgotten the 
gold ; and was obliged to confess to his friends that he 
was ashamed of his poverty, since it showed a want of 
common sense." 

Burns, no doubt, often lamented his situation in the 
same self-upbraiding spirit ; though the independence he 
enjoyed was of the genuine sort, and altogether agreed 
with his theory of life. It was that kind of independence 
inculcated in the Oriental story. They asked the famous 
Hatim Tayi, the most generous of mankind, " Have you 
ever met any one more independent than yourself ? " He 
replied : " Yes ! One day I gave a feast to the whole 
neighborhood, and had fifty oxen roasted. As I was pro- 



140 CHARACTERISTICS. 

ceeding to the place, I found a woodcutter tying up his 
fagots, I said, 'Why do you not go to Hatim's feast, 
which is open to all ? ' But he answered, * Whoever can 
eat the bread earned by his own labor will not put him- 
self under obligation to Hatim Tayi.' Then I knew that 
I had found one more independent than myself." 

Burns had a proud hatred of patronage. He would 
not, like Samson's bees, " make honey in the bowels of a 
lion, and fatten on the offal of a rich man's superfluities." 

Charlemagne had the habit of impressing the seal upon 
treaties which he had concluded with the pommel of his 
sword, upon which was engraved, " Thus with the pom- 
mel of my sword I seal this act, the conditions of which 
I will execute with its point." Burns, with a like sense 
of personal responsibility, swore "by that honor which 
crowns the upright statue of Robert Burns' Integrity." 
Like Voltaire, he perceived very early that every man 
must be hammer or anvil, and he determined with the 
great Frenchman to become a hammer. With what effect 
he hammered injustice, falsehood, and hypocrisy, and 
struck for liberty, equality, and the rights of man, all the 
world will attest till the last day. 

For his boldness he was, of course, hated. The hurt 
cried out. Enemies were as hostile as friends were faith- 
ful. The division was natural. Tze-Kung asked Confu- 
cius, " What do you say of a man who is loved by all the 
people of his village ? " The Master replied, " We may 
not for that accord an approval of him." " And what do 
you say of him who is hated by all the people of his vil- 
lage ? " The Master said, " We may not for that con- 
clude that he is bad. It is better than either of these 
cases that the good in the village love him, and the bad 
hate him." 

Said old Daniel, enthusiastically, in his Epistle to Lady 
Margaret, Countess of Cumberland, 

" Unless above himself he can 
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man." 



BURNS. 141 

Like all enthusiasts, Burns' standards, in his exalted mo- 
ments, were apt to be too high. The pattern was inimi- 
table, and approximations only were discouraging. Soc- 
rates' precept to attain honest fame — " Study to be what 
you wish to seem" — was to him disheartening. His 
self-reverence was shaken ; and he felt himself as much 
worse than himself as he had purposed being better. 
Self-reverence ! You remember how it was urged upon 
every one by the elder Cato, as every one is always in his 
own presence. 

" I was a lad of fifteen," said Scott to Lockhart, " when 
Burns came to Edinburgh. The only thing I remember 
which was remarkable in his manner was the effect pro- 
duced upon him by a print, representing a soldier lying 
dead on the snow, his dog sitting in misery on one side — 
on the other, his widow with a child in her arms. These 
lines of Langhorne's were written beneath : — 

" Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain, 
Perhaps that parent wept her soldier slain — 
Bent o 'er the babe, her eye dissolved in dew, 
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew, 
Gave the sad presage of his future years, 
The child of misery baptized in tears." 

Burns seemed much affected by the print: he actually 
shed tears. There was a strong expression of sense and 
shrewdness in all his lineaments ; the eye alone, I think, 
indicated the poetical character and temperament. It 
was large, and of a dark cast, which glowed (I say liter- 
ally glowed) when he spoke with feeling or interest. I 
never saw such another eye in a human head, though I 
have seen the most distinguished men of my time." 

Of Jeffrey, when a lad in his teens, it is recorded that 
one day, as he stood on the High street of Edinburgh, 
staring at a man whose appearance struck him, a person 
at a shop door tapped him on the shoulder, and said, 
"Aye, laddie, ye may weel look at that man. That's 
Robbie Burns." 



142 CHARACTERISTICS. 

" I have been in the company of many men of genius, 
some of them poets," said Ramsey, a laird, to Dr. Currie, 
" but I never witnessed such flashes of intellectual bright- 
ness as from him, the impulse of the moment, sparks of 
celestial fire. When I asked whether the Edinburgh lit- 
erati had mended his poems by their criticisms, ' Sir,' said 
he, ' these gentlemen remind me of some spinsters in my 
country, who spin their thread so fine, that it is neither fit 
for weft nor woof.' " 

The scholarly and refined Edinburghers rigidly scruti- 
nized the rustic poet, but all accounts warrant the state- 
ment that he paid them back in their own coin. His 
natural penetration was too keen to be blinded by a 
learned look, a haughty bearing, or the glitter of a fashion. 
One of his remarks, when he first went to Edinburgh was, 
that " between the men of rustic life and the polite world 
he observed little difference* j that in the former, though 
unpolished by fashion, and unenlightened by science, he 
had found much observation and intelligence." " He 
manifested," says Lockhart, "in the whole strain of his 
bearing and conversation, a most thorough conviction, 
that in the society of the most eminent men of his na- 
tion, he was exactly where he was entitled to be ; hardly 
deigned to flatter them by exhibiting even an occasional 
symptom of being flattered by their notice ; by turns 
calmly measured himself against the most cultivated un- 
derstandings of his time in discussion ; overpowered the 
witty sayings of the most celebrated convivialists by broad 
floods of merriment, impregnated with all the burning 
fire of genius ; astounded persons habitually enveloped 
in the thrice-piled folds of social reserve, by compelling 
them to tremble, nay to tremble visibly beneath the fear- 
less touch of natural pathos ; and all this without indi- 
cating the smallest willingness to be ranked among those 
professional ministers of excitement, who are content to 
be paid in money and smiles for doing what the specta- 



BURNS. I43 

tors and auditors would be ashamed of doing in their own 
persons, even if they had the power of doing it." 

Now and again, it is said, the homage to genius would 
assume the character of the patronage of dependence, 
and then Burns' proud spirit would break through the 
very courtesies of society, and lash the offender against 
his jealous sense of independence with sarcasm or satire. 
From this it has been judged by an English critic that 
pride was the key to the personal character of Burns, 
sometimes manifesting itself in what appeared to be arro- 
gance and injustice. Pride he had undoubtedly, says one 
of his biographers, but it was the pride of a man — an 
honest uncompromising pride, that scorned the arrogance 
and injustice of those who dared to obtrude their petty 
conventional honors or social position before one who 
knew their unreality. Could he have mounted a little of 
the furnishings of the artful hypocrite, or the pliant syco- 
phant, he might have slipped into the robes and dignity 
of some lucrative office. 

What a talker he must have been ! All accounts agree 
in representing his conversation as wonderful. It was 
better even than his verse. Sir Richard Phillips once 
went up to Coleridge, after hearing him talk in a large 
party, and offered him nine guineas a sheet for his con- 
versations. If any enterprising publisher had been for- 
tunate enough to secure a few hundred pages of Burns' 
conversation, he might have dreamed of building another 
Abbotsford. If another Boswell had followed him about, 
what a book we should have ! 

We have an account of a call that two Englishmen 
made upon him. They found him fishing. He received 
them with great cordiality, and asked them to share his 
humble dinner. He was in his happiest mood, and the 
charm of his conversation was altogether fascinating. 
He ranged over a variety of topics, illuminating whatever 
he touched. He related the tales of his infancy and 



144 CHARACTERISTICS. 

youth; he recited some of his gayest and some of his 
tenderest poems ; in the wildest of the strains of his mirth 
he threw in some touches of melancholy, and spread 
around him the electric emotions of his powerful mind. 
The Highland whiskey improved in its flavor ; the marble 
bowl was again and again emptied and replenished ; the 
guests of the poet forgot the flight of time and the dic- 
tates of prudence ; at the hour of midnight they lost 
their way to Dumfries, and could scarcely distinguish it 
when assisted by the morning's dawn. No wonder that 
" nicht wi' Burns " was so vividly remembered and so viv- 
idly narrated. 

In his fifteenth summer he first fell in love with a 
"bonnie, sweet, sonsie lass." The tones of her voice 
made his " heart-strings thrill like an ^Eolian harp," and 
made his pulse beat a " furious ratan," when he " looked 
and fingered over her little hand, to pick out the cruel 
nettle-stings and thistles." To her he wrote his first 
song, Handsome Nell. In it occurs this felicitous verse : 

" She dresses aye sae clean and neat, 
Baith decent and genteel, 
And then there 's something in her gait 
Gars ony dress look weal." 

"I composed it," he says, " in a wild enthusiasm of pas- 
sion, and to this hour I never recollect it but my heart 
melts, my blood sallies at the remembrance." 

In his nineteenth summer he fell in love again, "which 
ebullition," he says, " ended the school business at Kirk- 
oswold. It was in vain to think of doing any more good 
at school. The remaining week I stayed," he says, " I 
did nothing but craze the faculties of my soul about her, 
or steal out to meet her; and the two last nights of my 
stay in the country, had sleep been a mortal sin, the 
image of this modest and innocent girl had kept me 
guiltless." From that time on, we are told, for several 
years, love-making was his chief amusement, or rather 



BURNS. I45 

most serious business. His brother tells us that he was 
in the secret of half the love affairs of the parish of Tar- 
bolton, and was never without at least one of his own. 
There was not a comely girl in the parish on whom he did 
not compose a song, and then he made one which in- 
cluded them all. 

At twenty-three he had an affair which turned out to 
be serious. Ellison Begbie, whom he "adored," and who 
had "pledged her soul" to meet him "in the field of 
matrimony," jilted him, " with peculiar circumstances of 
mortification." His constitutional melancholy was in- 
creased to such a degree, that " for three months," he 
says, " I was in a state of mind scarcely to be envied 
by the hopeless wretches who have got their mittimus, 
Depart from me, ye accursed ! " To the cause of all this 
distress he wrote some of his finest songs, especially that 
of Mary Morison. 

" Yestreen when to the trembling string 

The dance gaed thro' the lighted ha', 
To thee my fancy took its wing, 

I sat, but neither heard nor saw : 
Tho' this was fair, an' that was braw, 

An' yon the toast of a' the town, 
I sighed, an' said amang them a', 

' Ye are na Mary Morison.' 

O Mary, canst thou wreck his peace, 

Wha for thy sake would gladly dee ? 
Or canst thou break that heart of his, 

Whase only faut is loving thee ? 
If love for love thou wilt nae gie, 

At least be pity on me shown ; 
A thought ungentle canna be 

The thought o' Mary Morison." 

In these lines to Clarinda, Mrs. M'Lehose, with whom 
he had the famous correspondence, are concentrated, 
Scott and Byron both thought, " the essence of a thou- 
sand love tales : " 



I46 CHARACTERISTICS. 

" Had we never loved so kindly, 
Had we never loved so blindly; 
Never met, or never parted, 
We had ne'er been broken-hearted." 

What a favorite he was with the fair ! It is said that 
Abdallah, the father of Mahomet, the most admirable of 
the Arabian youths, when he consummated his marriage 
with Amina, of the noble race of Zahrites, two hundred 
virgins died of jealousy and despair. Burns ! such a 
splendid fellow ! such a hearty lover ! what wonder that 
he also was the admiration of hosts of sighing maidens. 
Salvini, magnificent histrionic lover that he is, were tame 
indeed in comparison with Burns as an incarnation of the 
tender passion. 

He yielded to woman as Hercules yielded to Omphale, 
or Samson to Delilah. His love was not platonic, but, 
" the love of human passion, burning with the warmth of 
human affection." Lovely woman inspired him. He 
told Thomson that when he wished to compose a love- 
song, his recipe was to put himself on a " regimen of ad- 
miring a beautiful woman." When Aristotle was asked 
why people liked to spend a great deal of time in the 
presence of beauty, he said, " That is a question for a 
blind man to ask." 

His intense earnestness put him often at loggerheads 
with the universe. The Orientalists have a saying, that 
when a word has once escaped, a chariot with four horses 
cannot overtake it. He had opinions, and was unwise 
enough to express them. Wise men, said old John Sel- 
den, say nothing in dangerous times. The Lion, you 
know, called the Sheep to ask her if his breath smelt : 
she said Aye ; he bit off her head for a fool. He called 
the Wolf and asked him : he said No ; he tore him in 
pieces for a flatterer. At last he called the Fox and 
asked him : Truly he had got a cold and could not smell. 

Joubert has said, that we use up in the passions the 



BURNS. I47 

stuff that was given us for happiness. It is accounted a 
melancholy fact by Madame de Stael, that from the influ- 
ence of the passions, the human race is doomed to move 
in the same circle of error, notwithstanding its advance- 
ment by the acquisition of intellect. To most men, " ex- 
perience is like the stern lights of a ship, which illumine 
only the track it has passed." 

Memnon, in the story, conceived the insensate idea of 
becoming perfectly wise. He said to himself, To become 
very wise, all which is necessary is to control the passions, 
and that may be easily done. The day after, on his way 
home from the Palace, he reflected on the excellent res- 
olutions he had formed — ■ to defy the power of women ; 
to guard against intemperance and quarrels ; preserve his 
independence, and not solicit favors at court : yet in one 
day, he had suffered himself to be duped by a woman, 
and robbed, been intoxicated, lost deeply at play, had his 
eye knocked out in a quarrel, was reduced to poverty, 
and had solicited a favor at court, where he had received 
nothing but contempt. 

The ways of men will be awry. They will not straighten 
them, nor let you, without resistance. Remember the 
battle ! It is in cracking the bad nuts that you hurt your 
fingers. ' ' Charles the Fifth, Emperor of Germany, when 
he abdicated a throne, and retired to the monastery of 
Yuste, amused himself with the mechanical arts, and 
particularly with that of watch-making. He one day ex- 
claimed, " What an egregious fool must I have been to 
have squandered so much blood and treasure, in an ab- 
surd attempt to make all men think alike, when I cannot 
even make a few watches keep time together." 

Men mean better than they do ; and pride of opinion 
will account for most of their differences. For fifteen 
hundred years, the story is, two sects in Babylon had 
maintained a violent contest. One said it was proper to 
enter the Temple with the right foot foremost ; the other 



148 CHARACTERISTICS. 

insisted that it should be with the left foot foremost ; and 
both sects impatiently expected the day on which the fes- 
tival of the sacred fire was to be celebrated to see which 
of them Zadig would favor. Zadig, you must know, had 
acquired the admiration and love of the people ; his 
name was celebrated throughout the empire. The learned 
considered him as an oracle ; the priests confessed that 
he was wiser than the old archmagi Yebor ; and they be- 
lieved only what he thought was probable. The people 
were all in suspense and perturbation. The day arrived, 
and every eye was fixed on the feet of Zadig. He placed 
them close together, and jumped into the Temple. 

Genius is bold, and strikes to the core. Talent hesitates, 
and stops short. There is said to be a species of cactus 
from whose outer bark, if torn by some ignorant person, 
there exudes a poisonous liquid ; but the natives, who 
know the plant, strike to the core, and thus find a sweet, 
refreshing juice, that renews their strength. 

Talent busies itself with modes and accommodations, 
and the purpose is apt to be obscured in a chaos of de- 
tails. We have an analysis of one of the most pathetic 
of Balzac's minor stories, which describes the fate of a 
poor painter, who had labored for years at a picture des- 
tined to create a new era in art. All his hopes in life, his 
love and his ambition, were involved in his success. No 
one had been admitted to the room in which he labored 
with unremitting devotion. At last, the day came when 
the favored person stood before the curtain which con- 
cealed the masterpiece. The painter drew it aside, slowly 
and solemnly, and revealed a meaningless confusion of 
chaotic coloring. The artist's mind was unhinged, and 
had been nearly destroyed by endless refinements and de- 
tails. Recalling the statement made by Dr. Johnson, that 
Mallet, though pensioned for the purpose, never wrote a 
single line of his projected life of Marlborough, — grop- 
ing for materials, and thinking of it, till he exhausted his 
mind. 



BURNS. 149 

The rapidity of Burns' genius may be imagined from 
the production of some of his poems — Tarn o' Shanter, 
for instance — which, we are told by Mrs. Burns, was the 
work of a single day. She retained a vivid recollection 
of it. Her husband had spent most of the day by the 
river side, and in the afternoon she joined him with her 
two children. He was busily engaged crooning to himself ; 
and Mrs. Burns perceiving that her presence was an in- 
terruption, loitered behind with her little ones among the 
broom. Her attention was presently attracted by the 
strange and wild gesticulations of the bard, who was now 
seen at some distance, agonized with an ungovernable 
access of joy. He was reciting very loud, and with tears 
rolling down his cheeks, those animated verses which he 
had just conceived : 

" Now Tarn ! O Tam ! had thae been queans, 
A' plump and strapping, in their teens." 

" I wish ye had seen him," said his wife ; " he was 
in such ecstasy that the tears were happing down his 
cheeks." Some passages of that poem, produced that 
day by the river side, appear to us as the figures of Michel 
Angelo appeared to Castelar — " as if they had issued 
from the flashes of a tempest, and been produced from 
the fury of a giant." The rapidity of his genius may be 
illustrated by a tradition of Mahomet, who, his followers 
believe, was conveyed by the angel Gabriel through the 
seven heavens, paradise, and hell, and held fifty-nine thou- 
sand conferences with God, and was brought back to his 
bed before the water had finished flowing from a pitcher 
which he upset as he departed. 

In sight of the Mexicans, who had a vast superiority of 
men and artillery, General Taylor held a council of war, 
and the nearly unanimous opinion was, that he should not 
risk a contest. " Gentlemen," said Taylor, " I adjourn 
this council, until to-morrow — after the battle," — which, 
it is hardly necessary to say, he won, against the great 



150 CHARACTERISTICS. 

odds. Burns had like confidence in his abilities, and 
knew what he could do. Scott told Leslie, the artist, that 
he had known a laboring man who was with Burns when 
he turned up the mouse with his plow. The poet's first 
impulse was to kill it, but checking himself, as his eye 
followed the little creature, he said, " I '11 make that mouse 
immortal." In connection with this, how amusing the 
letter received by Goethe, from a conceited student, who 
begged of him the plan for the second part of Faust, 
with the design of completing the work himself ! 

The first object that strikes the eye on approaching 
Palermo is the Monte Pellegrino, whose square and iso- 
lated mass shelters the town from the north-westerly 
winds, and makes the sirocco still more oppressive. When 
the great Napoleon was in power, the people believed, 
it is said, so great was their confidence in his supernat- 
ural power, that if he made himself master of Sicily, he 
would cause this mountain to be thrown into the sea. 
The ruder country lads and the lower peasantry, looked 
upon Burns as more than a man — with something like 
supernatural power. Especially they dreaded "lest he 
should pickle and preserve them in sarcastic song." Once 
at a penny wedding, when two wild lads quarreled, and 
were about to fight, Burns rose up and said, " Sit down, 
or I '11 hang you up like potato-bogles in sang to-morrow." 
They ceased, and sat down, it is stated, as if their noses 
had been bleeding. 

It is an observation of Lord Halifax that a man has 
rarely one good quality but he possesses too much of it. 
Burns' detestation of falsehood, injustice, and hypocrisy, 
sometimes made him merciless in assaulting them. Hyp- 
ocrites, especially, trembled and winced under his lash. 
He was well aware, with Moliere, of the marvelous ad- 
vantages that the profession of hypocrisy possesses, and 
the fact angered him. It is an act, says the French dram- 
atist, of which the imposture is always respected ; and 



BURNS. 151 

though it may be discovered, no one dares to do any- 
thing against it. All the other vices of man are liable to 
censure, and every one has the liberty of boldly attack- 
ing them, but hypocrisy is a privileged vice, which with 
its hand closes everybody's mouth, and enjoys its repose 
with sovereign impunity. 

" The tender creature's eyes with sweetness swell : 
Heaven 's in those eyes, and in his heart is hell." 

" There is some hypocrisy," says Thackeray, " of which 
one does not like even to entertain the thought ; espe- 
cially that awful falsehood which trades with divine truth, 
and takes the name of Heaven in vain." Kossuth had a 
similar horror of the same awful falsehood, when he spoke 
of one who had climbed to the top of the altar of God 
to light the torch of Satan. 

Burns hated lying, and had a conscience toward God, 
which, says George Macdonald, is the guide to freedom, 
but conscience toward society is the slave of a fool. 
" Any man may put himself in training for a liar by doing 
things he would be ashamed to have known." You re- 
member the philosopher in Lucian, who was present at 
Jupiter's whispering place, and heard one pray for rain, 
another for fair weather ; one for his wife's, another for 
his father's death, etc., — all asking that at God's hand 
which they were ashamed any man should hear. 

Peasantry and gentry, saint and sinner, alike knew, and 
alike dreaded, his ridicule. And what is there, pray, that 
is more dreadful than the ridicule of genius ? Nothing 
so much put Napoleon in a rage : it made him drive Mad- 
ame de Stael out of his empire. Nobody likes it, for the 
reason that nobody likes to be exposed, and all the world 
is ready to unite in punishing it. The Koran threatens 
that on the day of resurrection, those who have indulged 
in ridicule will be called to the door of Paradise, and 
hear it shut in their faces, when they reach it. Again, on 
their turning back they will be called to another door, 



152 CHARACTERISTICS. 

and again, on reaching it, will see it closed against them ; 
and so on without end. 

Burns, for his disposition to satire, was bitterly pun- 
ished by his neighbors, in the only way they could punish 
one so superior to them. They exaggerated his follies, 
and scandalized his name. "The disposition," says 
Froude, speaking of a certain scandal relating to Caesar, 
"to believe evil of men who have risen a few degrees 
above their contemporaries, is a feature of human nature 
as common as it is base ; and when to envy there are 
added fear and hatred, malicious anecdotes spring like 
mushrooms in a forcing-pit." Arthur Helps remarks, in 
reference to the accusation against Cortez of having 
poisoned Ponce de Leon, that " any man who is much 
talked of will be much misrepresented. Indeed, malig- 
nant intention is unhappily the least part of calumny, 
which has its sources in idle talk, playful fancies, gross 
misrepresentations, utter exaggerations, and many other 
rivulets of error that sometimes flow together in one huge 
river of calumniation, which pursues its muddy, mischiev- 
ous course unchecked for ages." 

Admire him, however, they would, abuse him as they 
might. They were proud of him, even those who hated 
him. Moore records in his Diary, that when a number of 
persons in his presence were speaking of O'Connell, — 
of the mixture there was in the great Irishman of high 
and low, formidable and contemptible, mighty and mean, 
Bobus Smith summed up all by saying : " The only way 
to deal with such a man is to hang him up, and erect a 
statue to him under his gallows." 

Speaking his mind, as freely as Burns did, has ruined 
many a man. It is an extravagance that few men can af- 
ford. Sydney Smith, at a meeting of the clergy to petition 
parliament against the passage of the Catholic emancipa- 
tion bill, found himself in a minority of one. A poor cler- 
gyman whispered to him that he was quite of his way of 



BURNS. 153 

thinking, but had nine children. The witty and humane 
parson begged he would remain a Protestant. 

They pronounced him irreligious, because he hated and 
scourged hypocrisy. Full as he was of religious feeling, 
they were ready to deny him belief in God ; — the truth 
being that no one exceeded him in reverence of the Deity, 
nor had a greater horror of atheism or an atheist. Who 
could ever forget his expression ? — 

" An atheist's laugh 's a poor exchange 
For Deity offended." 

Few really great men have been professed atheists. 
Voltaire, it will be remembered, said to the atheist Dam- 
ilaville, " My friend, after you have supped on well-dressed 
partridges, drank your sparkling champagne, and slept on 
cushions of down in the arms of your mistress, I have 
no fear of you, though you do not believe in God. But 
if you are perishing of hunger, and I meet you in the 
corner of a wood, I would rather dispense with your com- 
pany." 

His hatred of injustice, cant, and hypocrisy, had the 
effect no doubt to put him often into too intimate relation 
and association with those who were really uncongenial 
£0 him, but who had like aversions with himself. It has 
been said, somewhat cynically perhaps, "That we must 
have the same enmities to be united in spirit. In order 
to love one another, we must have hatreds in common." 
Some strange friendships in political life, might be cited 
in illustration. Literature, too, could produce some 
proofs. We know, for instance, how, on account of the 
satire of Fielding, the moral Richardson and the disso- 
lute Cibber became lasting friends. 

But, in mixing with all, he found many advantages. 
Meeting freely the low and the mean, as well as the high 
and influential, he had every view of man, and was en- 
abled to know the possibilities of so great a composition. 
The good and the evil lie close together ; the virtues and 



154 CHARACTERISTICS. 

the vices alternate : so is power accumulated ; alternately 
metals and rags — a terrible voltaic pile. To know man, 
you must know men — all sorts of men. Nothing, it has 
been truly said, more conducts to liberality of judgment 
than facile intercourse with various minds. The com- 
merce of intellect loves distant shores. The small retail 
dealer trades only with his neighbor ; when the great 
merchant trades, he links the four quarters of the globe. 

But with all his gettings, he did not get the wisdom of 
silence. He knew it, but could not put it in practice. 
He advised it, but did not act upon it. 

" Aye free, aff han' your story tell, 
When wi' a bosom crony ; 
But still keep something to yoursel' 
Ye scarcely tell to ony." 

And here we may profit by an observation of Leigh 
Hunt's — which Burns above all men realized — that the 
great secret of giving advice successfully is to mix up 
with it something that implies a real consciousness of the 
adviser's own defects, and as much as possible of an ac- 
knowledgment of the other party's merits. Most advisers 
sink both the one and the other ; and hence the failure 
which they meet with, and deserve. Burns knew too well 
his own habit of talking right out of his mind, and mem- 
orably warned against the dangers of so easy and costly 
an indulgence. The law of the Pundits he should have 
nailed on his door-post : " The Magistrate, at what time 
he is desirous to consult with his counselors, should 
choose a retired place, on the top of the house, or on the 
top of a mountain, or in the desert, or some such secret 
recess, and shall hold his council there ; and in places 
where there are parrots, or other talkative birds, he shall 
not hold his council, while they are present." 

He was a born convivialist, and they pronounced him 
a drunkard. Drinking was very general in his day, and 
we imagine he drank little if any more than those who 



BURNS. 155 

drank less publicly. " It is a current story in Teviot- 
dale," says Scott, " that in the house of an ancient family 
of distinction, much addicted to Presbyterianism, a Bible 
was always put into the sleeping apartment of the guests, 
along with a bottle of strong ale. On some occasion 
there was a visiting of clergymen in the vicinity of the 
castle, all of whom were invited to dinner by the worthy 
baronet, and several abode ail night. According to the 
fashion of the times, seven of the reverend guests were 
allotted to one large barrack-room, which was used on 
such occasions of extended hospitality. The butler took 
care that the divines were presented, according to custom, 
each with a Bible and a bottle of ale. But after a little 
consultation amongst themselves, they are said to have 
recalled the domestic as he was leaving the apartment. 
1 My friend,' said one of the venerable guests, 'you must 
know, when we meet together as brethren, the youngest 
minister reads aloud a portion of Scripture to the rest • — 
only one Bible, therefore, is necessary ; take away the 
other six, and in their place bring six more bottles of 
ale.' " 

It is yet not an uncommon thing, we believe, in Scot- 
land, for the clergyman, upon returning with the gentle- 
men to the dining-hall, after dinner, to ask a blessing, the 
same as at dinner when the ladies were present, although 
only the bottles and the necessary conveniences for drink- 
ing have a place upon the table. 

Alcohol is as old as Satan. Klopstock, in his Messiah, 
indulges the speculation that the loved and hated thing 
was introduced by Satan into the tree of knowledge be- 
fore our first parents partook of it, and was attended with 
the same effects that have followed it ever since. One of 
the tales in Gesta Romanorum is to the effect that Noah 
discovered the wild vine, and because it was bitter, he took 
the blood of four animals, — of a lion, of a lamb, a pig, 
and a monkey; this mixture he united with earth, and 



156 CHARACTERISTICS. 

made a kind of fertilizer, which he put at the roots of the 
vines. Thus the blood sweetened the fruit, with which 
he afterward intoxicated himself, and lying naked in his 
tent, was derided by his younger son. 

The excuse generally given for drinking is, that it un- 
clogs the wheels of life, and sets them running faster than 
usual. A zest in that way is given to it, for the time be- 
ing, in spite of all its impediments and burdens. Black- 
stone composed his Commentaries with a bottle of port 
before him. Addison's conversation is reported as not 
good for much till he had taken a similar dose. Byron's 
account of a party with Sheridan is picturesque. It was, 
he says, first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then 
disputatious, then unintelligible, then altogethery, then in- 
articulately, then drunk. Irving used to tell a witty anec- 
dote of one of his early friends, Henry Ogden, illustrative 
of the convivial feature of the dinners in New York when 
he was a young man. Ogden had been at one of these 
festive meetings on the evening before, and had left with 
a brain half bewildered by the number of bumpers he 
had been compelled to drink. He told Irving the next 
day that in going home he had fallen through a grating, 
which had carelessly been left open, into a vault beneath. 
The solitude, he said, was rather dismal at first, but sev- 
eral other of the guests fell in, in the course of the even- 
ing, and they had on the whole quite a pleasant night 
of it. 

The implicit faith the Scotch have in their clergy, in 
all things, is sometimes a great protection to the cloth. 
Fifty years ago, we are told, when most of the good folk 
in Scotland esteemed going to the theatre as entirely 
analogous to going to destruction, a popular Edinburgh 
preacher, being in London, was surreptitiously entering 
with the multitude into the pit of Drury Lane. Suddenly 
a hand was laid upon him, and an awe-stricken voice said, 
" Oh, Doctor MacGrugar, what would the congregation in 



BURNS. 157 

Tolbooth Kirk say if I told them I saw you here ? " 
" Deed," replied the ready-witted divine, " they wadna 
believe 3-011, and so you needna tell them." 

Dr. Alexander Webster, also of Edinburgh, was re- 
markable, according to Scott, for the talent with which 
he at once supported his place in convivial society, and a 
high character as a leader of the strict and rigid Presby- 
terian party in the Church of Scotland, which certainly 
seemed to require very different qualifications. He was 
ever gay amid the gayest. When it once occurred to 
some one present to ask, what one of his elders would 
think, should he see his pastor in such a merry mood : — 
" Think ! " replied the doctor ; " why he would not believe 
his own eyes." 

Johnson and Boswell were told in Sky, that every week 
a hogshead of claret was drunk at the table of Sir Alex- 
ander MacDonald — kinsman of the romantic and heroic 
Flora, the guide and companion of Charles Edward 
Stuart, after his defeat at Culloden, disguised as a woman. 

That for which a laird or a doctor of divinity was ex- 
cused, was punished with severity in a peasant. Burns 
was, and is, bitterly censured, for what were, in his day, 
common sins of society. It is too much the way of the 
world, savage or civilized, and, we fear, ever will be. It 
is the Feejeean idea of justice, where the criminality of an 
act is in proportion to the rank of the offender. Murder 
by a chief is less heinous than petty larceny committed 
by a man of low rank. It is the universal rule, to esti- 
mate men, and respect them, according to circumstances. 
Pope was one day with Sir Godfrey Kneller, when his 
nephew, a Guinea-trader, came in. "Nephew," said Sir 
Godfrey, "you have the honor of seeing the two greatest 
men in the world." . " I don't know how great you may 
be," said the slave-trader, "but I don't like your looks: 
I have often bought a man, much better than both of you 
together, all muscles and bones, for ten guineas." 



158 CHARACTERISTICS. 

" It is a folly," said Publius Syrus, " to punish your 
neighbor by fire when you live next door." " If he that 
were guiltless himself," said old Burton, " should fling 
the first stone at thee, and he alone should accuse thee 
that were faultless, how many executioners, how many ac- 
cusers, wouldst thou have ? If every man's sins were 
written in his forehead, and secret faults known, how many 
thousands would parallel, if not exceed thy offense ? It 
may be the judge that gave you sentence, the jury that 
condemned thee, the spectators that gazed on thee, de- 
served much more, and were far more guilty than thou 
thyself. But it is thine infelicity to be taken, to be made 
a public example of justice, to be a terror to the rest; yet 
should every man have his desert, thou wouldst peradven- 
ture be a saint in comparison." 

Say the Buddhists, "This is an old saying, O Atula ! 
this is not only of to-day : ' They blame him who sits si- 
lent, they blame him who speaks much, they also blame 
him who says little ; there is no one on earth who is not 
blamed.' " 

Archibald Prentice could not bear to hear any one 
speak evil of his friend Burns. Once at a meeting of 
ministers and elders, some of them began to denounce 
Burns' works as immoral. " I tell you what," said the 
old man, " if you had a' his ill and the half o' his gude 
amang ye, ye 'd be a' better men than ye are." 

"Since Adam," said Margaret Fuller, "there has been 
none that approached nearer fitness to stand up before 
God and angels in the naked majesty of manhood than 
Robert Burns ; — but there was a serpent in his field also ! 
Yet but for his fault we could never have seen brought 
out the brave and patriotic modesty with which he owned 
it. Shame on him who could bear to think of faults in 
this rich jewel, unless reminded by such confession." 

Ah ! the chances and accidents and risks of life ! We 
never can estimate them. The Duke of Wellington was 



BURNS. 159 

accustomed to say that the stumbling of a horse in a 
charge of cavalry might lose a battle ; and, mindful of 
these chances, Sir Charles Napier wrote, " I am as sure 
of a victory as a man who knows that victory is an acci- 
dent can be." Julius Caesar owed two millions when he 
risked the experiment of being General in Gaul. If Ju- 
lius Caesar, reflected Bulwer, had not lived to cross the 
Rubicon, and pay off his debts, what would his creditors 
have called Julius Caesar ? 

There is a novel by Emile Souvestre, in which all the 
warm-hearted people come to grief, and the cold-hearted 
calculating monopolize all the honors and riches of this 
world. But the balance is restored in the next, when all 
hearts being laid bare, in those of the prosperous appears 
a serpent, and in those of the reprobates a star. 



VII. 
THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 

In the year of our Lord 1720, in the province of New 
Jersey, was born into the world, in the judgment of a very 
high literary and critical authority of Great Britain, " the 
man, who, in all the. centuries since the advent of Christ, 
lived nearest to the Divine pattern." John Woolman was 
the name of the remarkable man. He was a Quaker, 
who lived a quiet, somewhat ascetic life, and left behind 
him some simple, unrhetorical writings, all of which to- 
gether would make no more than one ordinary volume. 
The chief and best known of his published works is the 
Journal of his Life and Travels. It is one of those little 
books that have had incalculable good influence. " Re- 
member," says Joubert, " what St. Francis of Sales said, 
in speaking of the Imitation of Christ, — ' I have sought 
repose every where, and have only found it in a little cor- 
ner, with a little book.' Happy is the writer who can 
make a beautiful little book! " Woolman's Journal is 
such another beautiful little book, and deserves to be read 
and cherished along with the immortal Imitation. The 
one, indeed, is a constant reminder of the other, as the 
same spirit of purity, humility, and devotion characterizes 
both. 

" Get the writings of John Woolman by heart," is the 
emphatic advice of Charles Lamb, in one of his essays. 
Dr. Charming, not long before his death, expressed his 
very great surprise that the writings of Woolman were so 
little known. His countenance lighted up as he pro- 
nounced Woolman's Journal " beyond comparison the 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. l6l 

sweetest and purest autobiography in the language." "I 
should almost despair of that man," said Coleridge, "who 
could peruse the Life of John Woolman without an ame- 
lioration of heart." Crabb Robinson, after referring to a 
sermon by the distinguished Edward Irving, which he 
feared would deter rather than promote belief, said : 
" How different this from John Woolman's Journal I have 
been reading at the same time ! A perfect gem ! His is 
a beautiful soul. An illiterate tailor, he writes in a style 
of the most exquisite purity and grace. His moral quali- 
ties are transferred to his writings. His religion was love. 
His whole existence and all his passions were love. If 
one could venture to impute to his creed, and not to his 
personal character, the delightful frame of mind he ex- 
hibited, one could not hesitate to be a convert. His 
Christianity is most inviting, — it is fascinating." Theo- 
dore Parker was in like manner impressed with the ex- 
traordinary qualities of the Journal, and the Christian 
character of its author. " This is one of the most en- 
couraging books," he wrote, "that I ever read. What 
depths of insight into divine things ! How lowly and 
meek ! How lofty, too, his aspirations ! What gentle 
courage — what faith! " 

The most encouraging of all the thousands and thou- 
sands of books the great reader and scholar and thinker 
had read ! Why ? Because, the Christianity inculcated 
in it, illustrated in it, incarnated in its author, is appre- 
hensible, comprehensible — more than all, it is practical 
and practicable. That, we take to be the reason, and a 
reason sufficient, why the Journal of John Woolman is 
so encouraging to Christians and so unique in religious 
literature. The religion it inculcates and illustrates is a 
religion for men, not for angels — for human creatures, 
not for celestial intelligences — very human creatures, 
with appetites, and passions, and naked bodies — only a 
little while on the earth at the longest, and not long 
ii 



l62 CHARACTERISTICS. 

enough to know any thing that is really worth knowing 
except by suffering and blundering — creatures that are 
not only sinners, but b>orn sinners — of infinitely long 
lines of sinners — sinners from the foundation — blind, 
ignorant, and erring — for such human creatures — and 
all human creatures are such — is the Christianity of 
Woolman adapted. He did not understand Christianity 
to be for the super-terrestrial, to whom sin is known only 
by wisdom. He understood it to be for men, needing it, 
and showed its adaptability by accepting it — its practi- 
cableness by practicing it. His Christianity was encour- 
aging, in that it did not require absolute imitation of, but 
some slight approximation to the Divine Founder. 

The discouraging mistake too commonly made by the 
preacher is to set up standards of conduct unattainable 
by himself or by any of his hearers. He turns the key 
of heaven against himself and all mankind. He preaches 
an empty heaven, when an empty heaven, in his reflective 
moments, he no more believes in than any of his hearers. 
His logic and his law, he perceives, exclude him as cer- 
tainly from paradise as they exclude all the myriads of 
mankind. He knows, if he has observed, that no man 
is so bad but that there is some good in him, and that no 
man is so good but that he might be better. The good 
and the bad, too, appear to him, the more he observes, so 
much worse or better according to situation and circum- 
stances, that his abstract estimates of them become con- 
fused, and require constant revision. The differences 
between the good and the bad, which appeared to him so 
great, as he knows more of man and men — more of the 
weaknesses and distresses and ignorances of his fellows 
— seem less and less to him • and he reflects how, in the 
eye of the Maker, who knows every thing of every one 
of his creatures — every besetment and every infirmity—- 
how impossible, with all his efforts, to accomplish very 
much — how next to impossible to use at all his imper- 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 163 

fectly developed wings — the good and the bad must ap- 
pear pitifully alike, if not the same. The moral distinc- 
tions which appear to the preacher, with his imperfect 
vision, so very definite, may in the eye of God, who sees 
all, be nearly invisible. But for every little departure 
from his rigidly straight line, the preacher has a penalty 
ready-made — to be found in his own inflexible little code, 
if not in the New Testament. As if the creature, who 
knows next to nothing, should judge for the Creator, who 
knows every thing ! Ah ! justly is it said, our measure of 
rewards and punishments is most partial and incomplete, 
absurdly inadequate, utterly worldly, and we wish to con- 
tinue it into the next world. Into that next and awful 
world we strive to pursue men, and send after them our 
impotent party verdicts, of condemnation or acquittal. 
We set up our paltry little rods to measure Heaven im- 
measurable, as if, in comparison to that, Newton's mind, 
or Pascal's, or Shakespeare's, was any loftier than mine • 
as if the ray which travels from the sun would reach me 
sooner than the man who blacks my boots. Measured 
by that altitude, the tallest and the smallest among us are 
so alike diminutive and pitifully base that we should take 
no count of the calculation, and it is a meanness to reckon 
the difference. 

A religion that is discouraging to hope, is a poor relig- 
ion for men ; and a religion that requires of them the 
impossible, is such. For some it may be easy to be good 
— very good — as we understand goodness ; for others 
it is nearly impossible to be good at all, according to pul- 
pit standards. To the former it may seem easy to be- 
lieve that Christ should be imitated ; to the latter it seems 
to be only possible he should be approximated. He is 
the Great Exemplar, the Divine, to be approached, and 
only approached, as nearly as possible, by the creature. 
Now and then, it may be, a man is born into the world in 
whom are all the virtues so admirably mixed that it is 



1 64 CHARACTERISTICS. 

possible for him to approach very near to the Divine 
Founder — so near as almost to touch the hem of His 
garment ; the many, however, are unable to approach so 
near by a very great way ; while the great multitudes are 
so far off that, instead of seeing the light of His coun- 
tenance, they only see the reflection of it as it appears 
faintly, very faintly, in the comparatively few, very few, 
alas ! who are able to approach near enough to feel a 
little the direct rays of the Divine Effulgence. After a 
poor human creature has clone all that it is possible for 
him to do, it is discouraging to be told that he has not 
done enough ; that after he has done all that it is possible 
for him to do, he shall be damned. He knows himself 
what he can do and what he cannot do ; and finds him- 
self unable to accept a faith which offers rewards for the 
impracticable and impossible only. If the gate of para- 
dise is to remain shut against him, for what he could not 
help, it must remain shut against all mankind, as he is 
not able to see the mighty difference in men that their 
hopeless separation implies ; — a separation inconceivable 
to a vast number of sincere believers in a future state, — 
believers in Christ, and heirs to heaven under his Tes- 
tament. 

The Christianity of Woolman is a practical, practi- 
cable Christianity. It is broad enough to meet the wants 
of every human being, and generous enough to encourage 
every human being to accept it, and, to the extent of pos- 
sibility, to shape his life by it. Nowhere in all his writ- 
ings do we find a single word discouraging to any human 
creature. The life he recommended he lived ; the wisdom 
he taught he illustrated ; the Christianity he preached he 
incarnated. Without violence or passion, he was com- 
manding; without great intellect or learning, he was con- 
vincing. His simplicity was more than eloquence ; his 
goodness was power. Humble, sincere, and devoted, 
there was no trace of selfishness visible in his transpar- 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 1 65 

ent character. He was what he wished to seem, and 
seemed to be what he was. 

Whittier, in his Introduction to the Journal, has some 
just observations upon Woolman's writings in general, — 
the larger portion of which are devoted to the subjects 
of slavery, uncompensated labor, and the excessive toil 
and suffering of the many to support the luxury of the 
few. " The argument running through them is searching, 
and in its conclusions uncompromising, but a tender 
love for the wrong-doer as well as the sufferer under- 
lies all. They aim to convince the judgment and reach 
the heart without awakening prejudice and passion. 
To the slaveholders of his time they must have seemed 
like the voice of conscience speaking to them in the cool 
of the day. One feels, in reading them, the tenderness 
and humility of a nature redeemed from all pride of opin- 
ion and self-righteousness, sinking itself out of sight, and 
intent only upon rendering smaller the sum of human 
sorrow and sin by drawing men nearer to God and to 
each other. The style is that of a man unlettered, but 
with natural refinement and delicate sense of fitness, the 
purity of whose heart enters into his language. There is 
no attempt at fine writing, not a word or phrase for ef- 
fect j it is the simple unadorned diction of one to whom 
the temptations of the pen seem to have been wholly un- 
known. He wrote as he believed from an inward spirit- 
ual prompting ; and with all his unaffected humility he 
evidently felt that his work was done in the clear radiance 
of ' the light which never was on land or sea.' It was not 
for him to outrun his Guide, or, as Sir Thomas Browne 
expresses it, to ' order the finger of the Almighty to his 
will and pleasure, but to sit still under the soft showers 
of Providence.' Very wise are these essays, but their 
wisdom is not altogether that of this world. They lead 
one away from all the jealousies, strifes, and competitions 
of luxury, fashion, and gain, out of the close air of parties 



1 66 CHARACTERISTICS. 

and sects, into a region of calmness, — ' the haunt of 
every gentle wind whose breath can teach the wild to love 
tranquillity ;' — a quiet habitation where all things are or- 
dered in what he calls ' the pure reason ; ' a rest from 
all self-seeking, and where no man's interest or activity 
conflicts with that of another. Beauty they certainly have, 
but it is not that which the rules of art recognize \ a cer- 
tain indefinable purity pervades them, making one sensi- 
ble, as he reads, of a sweetness as of violets. ' The secret 
of Woolman's style,' said Dr. Charming, * is that his eye 
was single, and that conscience dictated his words.' Of 
course we are not to look to the writings of such a man 
for tricks of rhetoric, the free play of imagination, or the 
unscrupulousness of epigram and antithesis. He wrote 
as he lived, conscious of ' the great Task-master's eye.' 
With the wise heathen Marcus Aurelius Antoninus he had 
learned to 'wipe out imaginations, to check desire, and 
let the spirit that is the gift of God to every man, as his 
guardian and guide, bear rule.' " 

John Woolman's gift, it has been well and justly said, 
by an appreciating religious writer, was love, — "a char- 
ity of which it does not enter into the natural heart of 
man to conceive, and of which the more ordinary expe- 
riences, even of renewed nature, give but a faint shadow. 
Every now and then, in the world's history, we meet with 
such men, the kings and priests of Humanity, on whose 
heads this precious ointment has been so poured forth 
that it has run down to the skirts of their clothing, and 
extended over the whole of the visible creation ; men 
who have entered, like Francis of Assisi, into the secret 
of that deep amity with God and with his creatures which 
makes man to be in league with the stones of the field, 
and the beasts of the field to be at peace with him. In 
this pure, universal charity there is nothing fitful or inter- 
mittent,* nothing that comes and goes in showers and 
gleams and sunbursts. Its springs are deep and constant, 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 167 

its rising is like that of a mighty river, its very overflow 
calm and steady, leaving life and fertility behind it." . 

" Looking at the purity, wisdom, and sweetness of his 
life, who shall say," asks a distinguished admirer, " that 
his faith in the teaching of the Holy Spirit — the interior 
guide and light — was a mistaken one ? Surely it was no 
illusion by which his feet were so guided that all who saw 
him felt that, like Enoch, he walked with God. ' Without 
the actual inspiration of the Spirit of Grace, the inward 
teacher and soul of our souls,' says Fenelon, ' we could 
neither do, will, nor believe good. We must silence every 
creature, we must silence ourselves also, to hear in a pro- 
found stillness of the soul this inexpressible voice of 
Christ. The outward word of the gospel itself without 
this living efficacious word within would be but an empty 
sound.' 'I am sure,' says Sir Thomas Browne, 'that 
there is a common spirit that plays within us, and that is 
the Spirit of God. Whoever feels not the warm gale and 
gentle ventilation of this Spirit, I dare not say he lives ; 
for truly without this to me there is no heat under the 
tropic, nor any light though I dwelt in the body of the 
sun.' 'Thou Lord,' says Augustine, ' communicatest thy- 
self to all : thou teachest the heart without words ; thou 
speakest to it without articulate sounds.' Never was this 
divine principle more fully tested than by John Woolman ; 
and the result is seen in a life of such rare excellence 
that the world is still better and richer for its sake, and 
the fragrance of it comes down to us through a century, 
still sweet and precious." 

At twenty-one he became a clerk and book-keeper in a 
small store kept by a tailor at Mount Holly. During the 
second year of his employment there, his employer, " hav- 
ing a negro woman, sold her, and desired me," he says, 
" to write a bill of sale, the man being waiting who bought 
her. The thing was sudden ; and though I felt uneasy 
at the thoughts of writing an instrument of slavery for 



168 CHARACTERISTICS. 

one of my fellow-creatures, yet I remembered that I was 
hired by the year, that it was my master who directed me 
to do it, and that it was an elderly man, a member of our 
Society, who bought her; so through weakness I gave 
way, and wrote it ; but at the executing of it I was so 
afflicted in my mind, that I said before my master and 
the Friend, that I believed slave-keeping to be a practice 
inconsistent with the Christian religion. This, in some 
degree, abated my uneasiness ; yet as often as I reflected 
seriously upon it I thought I should have been clearer if 
I had desired to be excused from it, as a thing against 
my conscience ; for such it was. Some time after this a 
young man of our Society spoke to me to write a convey- 
ance of a slave to him, he having lately taken a negro 
into his house. I told him I was not easy to write it ; 
for, though many of our meeting and in other places kept 
slaves, I still believed the practice was not right, and de- 
sired to be excused from the writing. I spoke to him in 
good-will ; and he told me that keeping slaves was not 
altogether agreeable to his mind ; but that the slave being 
a gift made to his wife he had accepted her. " 

This circumstance was the beginning of a life of quiet 
but persistent opposition to slavery. Not long afterward 
he visited Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina. He 
was afflicted by the prevalence of the sin of slavery. It 
appeared to him, in his own words, " as a dark gloominess 
overhanging the land." On his return he wrote an essay 
on the subject, which was published in 1754, bearing the 
imprint of Benjamin Franklin. Three years later he made 
a second visit to the Southern meetings of Friends. 
" Traveling as a minister of the gospel, he was compelled 
to sit down at the tables of slaveholding planters, who 
were accustomed to entertain their friends free of cost, 
and who could not comprehend the scruples of their guest 
against receiving as a gift food and lodging which he re- 
garded as the gain of oppression. He was a poor man, 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 169 

but he loved truth more than money. He therefore either 
placed the pay for his entertainment in the hands of some 
member of the family, for the benefit of the slaves, or 
gave it directly to them, as he had opportunity." " When 
I expected," he says, "soon to leave a friend's house 
where I had entertainment, if I believed that I should not 
keep clear from the gain of oppression without leaving 
money, I spoke to one of the heads of the family pri- 
vately, and desired them to accept of pieces of silver, and 
give them to such of their negroes as they believed would 
make the best use of them ; and at other times I gave 
them to the negroes myself, as the way looked clearest to 
me. Before I came out, I had provided a large number 
of small pieces for this purpose, and this offering them 
to some who appeared to be wealthy people was a trial 
both to me and them. But the fear of the Lord so cov- 
ered me at times that my way was made easier than I ex- 
pected; and few, if any, manifested any resentment at 
the offer, and most of them, after some conversation, ac- 
cepted of them." 

He also journeyed through New York and the New 
England States in the same unostentatious but earnest 
way, bearing his testimony as he went against sinfulness 
of every sort, especially against the sin of slavery. The 
object of his travels was of course to meet with the mem- 
bers of his Society ; but, says a distinguished anti-slavery 
leader, " the influence of the life and labors of John 
Woolman has by no means been confined to the religious 
society of which he was a member. It may be traced 
wherever a step in the direction of emancipation has been 
taken in America or in Europe. During the war of the 
Revolution many of the noblemen and officers connected 
with the French army became, as their journals abun- 
dantly testify, deeply interested in the Society of Friends, 
and took back to France with them something of its 
growing anti-slavery sentiment. Especially was this the 



lyo CHARACTERISTICS. 

case with Jean Pierre Brissot, the thinker and statesman 
of the Girondists, whose intimacy with Warner Mifflin, a 
friend and disciple of Woolman, so profoundly affected 
his whole after life. He became the leader of the Friends 
of the Blacks, and carried with him to the scaffold a pro- 
found hatred of slavery. To his efforts may be traced 
the proclamation of Emancipation in Hayti by the com- 
missioners of the French convention, and indirectly the 
subsequent uprising of the blacks and their successful 
establishment of a free government. The same influence 
reached Thomas Clarkson and stimulated his early efforts 
for the abolition of the slave-trade ; and in after life the 
volume of the New Jersey Quaker was the cherished com- 
panion of himself and his amiable helpmate. It was in 
a degree, at least, the influence of Stephen Grellet and 
William Allen, men deeply imbued with the spirit of 
Woolman, and upon whom it might almost be said his 
mantle had fallen, that drew the attention of Alexander I. 
of Russia to the importance of taking measures for the 
abolition of serfdom, an object the accomplishment of 
which the wars during his reign prevented, but which, left 
as a legacy of duty, has been peaceably effected by his 
namesake, Alexander II. In the history of Emancipation 
in our own country evidences of the same original im- 
pulse of humanity are not wanting. . . . Looking back 
to the humble workshop at Mount Holly from the stand- 
point of the Proclamation of President Lincoln, how has 
the seed sown in weakness been raised up in power ! " 

" Having now been several years with my employer," 
he says, "and he doing less in merchandise than hereto- 
fore, I was thoughtful about some other way of business, 
perceiving merchandise to be attended with much cumber 
in the way of trading in these parts. My mind, through 
the power of truth, was in a great degree weaned from 
the desire of outward greatness, and I was learning to be 
content with real conveniences, that were not costly, so 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 171 

that a way of life free from much entanglement appeared 
best for me, though the income might be small. I had 
several offers of business that appeared profitable, but I 
did not see my way clear to accept of them, believing 
they would be attended with more outward care and cum- 
ber than was required of me to engage in. I saw that 
an humble man, with the blessing of the Lord, might 
live on a little, and that where the heart was set on great- 
ness, success in business did not satisfy the craving ; but 
that commonly with an increase of wealth the desire of 
wealth increased. There was a care on my mind so to 
pass my time that nothing might hinder me from the most 
steady attention to the voice of the true Shepherd. My 
employer, though now a retailer of goods, was by trade a 
tailor, and kept a servant-man at that business ; and I 
began to think about learning the trade, expecting that if 
I should settle I might by this trade and a little retailing 
of goods get a living in a plain way, without the load of 
great business. I mentioned it to my employer, and we 
soon agreed on terms, and when I had leisure from the 
affairs of merchandise I w r orked with this man. I be- 
lieved the hand of Providence pointed out this business 
for me, and I was taught to be content with it, though I 
felt at times a disposition that would have sought for 
something greater ; but through the revelation of Jesus 
Christ I had seen the happiness of humility, and there 
was an earnest desire in me to enter deeply into it ; at 
times this desire arose to a degree of fervent supplication, 
wherein my soul was so environed with heavenly light 
and consolation that things were made easy to me which 
had been otherwise." 

A person at some distance tying sick, his brother came 
to Woolman to write his will. " I knew he had slaves," 
writes Woolman, " and, asking his brother, was told he 
intended to leave them as slaves to his children. As 
writing is a profitable employ, and as offending sober peo- 



172 CHARACTERISTICS. 

pie was disagreeable to my inclinations, I was straitened 
in my mind : but as I looked to the Lord, he inclined my 
heart to his testimony. I told the man that I believed 
that the practice of continuing slavery to this people was 
not right, and that I had a scruple in my mind against 
doing writings of that kind \ that though many in our 
Society kept them as slaves, still I was not easy to be 
concerned in it, and desired to be excused from going to 
write the will. I spake to him in the fear of the Lord, 
and he made no reply to what I said, but went away ; 
he also had some concerns in the practice, and I thought 
he was displeased with me. In this case I had fresh con- 
firmation that acting contrary to present outward interest, 
from a motive of Divine love and in regard to truth and 
righteousness, and thereby incurring the resentments of 
people, opens the way to a treasure better than silver, and 
to a friendship exceeding the friendship of men." 

His persistence in declining to write wills bequeathing 
human beings, and his mild and sincere manner — Chris- 
tian manner — of advocating emancipation, resulted some- 
times in the freedom of those whose enslavement it was 
intended to perpetuate. 

The increase of business soon became a burden. 
"Though my natural inclination," he says, " was towards 
merchandise, yet I believed truth required me to live 
more free from outward cumbers ; and there was now a 
strife in my mind between the two. In this exercise my 
prayers were put up to the Lord, who graciously heard 
me, and gave me a heart resigned to his holy will. Then 
I lessened my outward business, and, as I had opportu- 
nity, told my customers of my intentions, that they might 
consider what shop to turn to ; and in a while I wholly 
laid down merchandise, and followed my trade as a tailor 
by myself, having no apprentice. I also had a nursery of 
apple-trees, in which I employed some of my time in hoe- 
ing, grafting, trimming, and inoculating." " He seems," 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 1 73 

says Whittier, w to have regarded agriculture as the busi- 
ness most conducive to morals and physical health. He 
thought ' if the leadings of the spirit were more attended 
to, more people would be engaged in the sweet employ- 
ment of husbandry, where labor is agreeable and health- 
ful.' He does not condemn the honest acquisition of 
wealth in other business free from oppression ; even 
1 merchandising,' he thought, might be carried on inno- 
cently and in pure reason. Christ does not forbid the 
laying up of a needful support for family and friends ; 
the command is, ' Lay not up for yourselves treasures on 
earth.' From his little farm on the Rancocas he looked 
out with a mingled feeling of wonder and sorrow upon the 
hurry and unrest of the world ; and especially was he 
pained to see luxury and extravagance overgrowing the 
early plainness and simplicity of his own religious society. 
He regarded the merely rich man with unfeigned pity. 
With nothing of his scorn, he had all of Thoreau's com- 
miseration, for people who went about bowed down with 
the weight of broad acres and great houses on their 
backs." "Though trading in things useful," he says, "is 
an honest employ, yet through the great number of super- 
fluities which are bought and sold, and through the cor- 
ruption of the times, they who apply to merchandise for 
a living have great need to be well experienced in that 
precept which the Prophet Jeremiah laid down for his 
scribe : ' Seekest thou great things for thyself ? seek them 
not.' " 

Writing to Friends at their monthly meeting in North 
Carolina, he says : " First, my dear friends, dwell in hu- 
mility ; and take heed that no views of outward gain get 
too deep hold of you, that so your eyes being single to 
the Lord, you may be preserved in the way of safety. 
Where people let loose their minds after the love of out- 
ward things, and are more engaged in pursuing the profits 
and seeking the friendships of this world than to be in- 



174 CHARACTERISTICS. 

wardly acquainted with the way of true peace, they walk 
in a vain shadow, while the true comfort of life is wanting. 
Their examples are often hurtful to others ; and their 
treasures thus collected do many times prove dangerous 
snares to their children. . . . Treasures, though small, 
attained on a true principle of virtue, are sweet \ and 
while we walk in the light of the Lord there is true com- 
fort and satisfaction in the possession ; neither the mur- 
murs of an oppressed people, nor a throbbing, uneasy 
conscience, nor anxious thoughts about the events of 
things, hinder the enjoyment' of them. When we look 
towards the end of life, and think on the division of our 
substance among our successors, if we know that it was 
collected in the fear of the Lord, in honesty, in equity, 
and in uprightness of heart before him, we may consider 
it as his gift to us, and, with a single eye to his blessing, 
bestow it on those we leave behind us. Such is the hap- 
piness of the plain ways of true virtue." 

How strange this old-fashioned Christian philosophy 
seems to us, in these feverish days of greed and desperate 
competition ! How strange to us this pious " taste for 
poverty," as Souvestre calls it, when gold, more than ever, 
is an object of worship, and poverty so generally is thought 
to be, and sometimes admits itself to be, criminal. 

"Having at times," he says, "perceived a shyness in 
some Friends of considerable note towards me, I found 
an engagement in gospel love to pay a visit to one of 
them ; and as I dwelt under the exercise, I felt a resign- 
edness in my mind to go and tell him privately that I had 
a desire to have an opportunity with him alone ; to this 
proposal he readily agreed, and then, in the fear of the 
Lord, things relating to that shyness were searched to the 
bottom, and we had a large conference, which, I believe, 
was of use to both of us, and I am thankful that way was 
opened for it." 

In a debate in one of the church meetings on the sub- 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 1 75 

ject of lotteries, he took decided grounds against them. 
" In the heat of zeal," he says, " I made reply to what an 
ancient Friend said, and when I sat down I saw that my 
words were not enough seasoned with charity. After this 
I spoke no more on the subject. Some time after the 
minute was made I remained uneasy with the manner of 
my speaking to an ancient Friend, and could not see my 
way clear to conceal my uneasiness, though I was con- 
cerned that I might say nothing to weaken the cause in 
which I had labored. After some close exercise and 
hearty repentance for not having attended closely to the 
safe guide, I stood up, and, reciting the passage, ac- 
quainted Friends that though I durst not go from what 
I had said as to the matter, yet I was uneasy with the 
manner of my speaking, believing milder language would 
have been better. As this was uttered in some degree of 
creaturely abasement after a warm debate, it appeared to 
have a good savor amongst us." 

Thinking of "hats and garments dyed with a dye hurt- 
ful to them," and of "wearing more clothes in summer 
than are useful," made him "uneasy," "believing them 
to be customs which have not their foundation in pure 
wisdom. The apprehension," he says, " of being singu- 
lar from my beloved friends was a strait upon me, and 
thus I continued in the use of such things contrary to my 
judgment." Pretty soon, however, his " mind was settled 
in relation to hurtful dyes," having determined that all 
new garments should be of the natural color. " Then I 
thought," he says, " of getting a hat the natural color of 
the fur, but the apprehension of being looked upon as 
one affecting singularity felt uneasy to me." On this ac- 
count he was " under close exercise of mind, greatly de- 
siring to be rightly directed," "when," he says, "being 
deeply bowed in spirit before the Lord, I was made will- 
ing to submit to what I apprehended was required of me, 
and when I returned home got a hat of the natural color 



176 CHARACTERISTICS. 

of the fur. In attending meetings this singularity was 
a trial to me, and more especially at this time, as white 
hats were used by some who were fond of following the 
changeable modes of dress, and as some Friends who 
knew not from what motives I wore it grew shy of me, 
I felt my way for a time shut up in the exercise of the 
ministry." 

He was greatly distressed on account of the sale by 
white people of rum to the Indians, and his Journal, dur- 
ing a missionary visit to the natives, contains some note- 
worthy observations growing out of it. " I was," he says, 
"renewedly confirmed in a belief that if all our inhab- 
itants lived according to sound wisdom, laboring to pro- 
mote universal love and righteousness, and ceased from 
every inordinate desire after wealth, and from all customs 
which are tinctured with luxury, the way would be easy 
for our inhabitants, though they might be much more nu- 
merous than at present, to live comfortably on honest 
employments, without the temptation they are so often 
under of being drawn into schemes to make settlements 
on lands which have not been purchased of the Indians, 
or of applying to that wicked practice of selling rum to 
them." "A weighty and heavenly care came over my 
mind, and love filled my heart towards all mankind, in 
which I felt a strong engagement that we might be obe- 
dient to the Lord while in tender mercy he is yet calling 
to us, and that we might so attend to pure universal right- 
eousness as to give no just cause of offense to the Gen- 
tiles, who do not profess Christianity, whether they be 
the blacks from Africa, or the native inhabitants of this 
continent." 

The circumstance of having joined with another exec- 
utor in selling a negro lad till he might attain the age of 
thirty years, was the cause of great sorrow to him. " With 
abasement of heart I may now say," he says, " that some- 
times as I have sat in a meeting with my heart exercised 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 177 

towards that awful Being who respecteth not persons nor 
colors, and have thought upon this lad, I have felt that 
all was not clear in my mind respecting him ; and as I 
have attended to this exercise and fervently sought the 
Lord, it hath appeared to me that I should make some 
restitution. My mind for a time was covered with dark- 
ness and sorrow. Under this sore affliction my heart was 
softened to receive instruction, and I now first perceived 
that as I had been one of the two executors who had sold 
this lad for nine years longer than is common for our 
children to serve, so I should now offer part of my sub- 
stance to redeem the last half of the nine years ; but as 
the time was not yet come, I executed a bond, binding 
myself and my executors to pay to the man to whom he 
was sold what to candid men mfght appear equitable for 
the last four and a half years of his time, in case the said 
youth should be living, and in a condition likely to pro- 
vide comfortably for himself." 

In 1772, in the fifty-second year of his age, he visited 
England, with a certificate directed to Friends in Great 
Britain. He declined a passage in the cabin for the rea- 
sons (to use his own language) "That on the outside of 
that part of the ship where the cabin was I observed sun- 
dry sorts of carved work and imagery ; that in the cabin 
I observed some superfluity of workmanship of several 
sorts ; and that according to the ways of men's reckoning, 
the sum of money to be paid for a passage in that apart- 
ment has some relation to the expense of furnishing it to 
please the minds of such as give way to a conformity to 
this world ; and that in this, as in other cases, the moneys 
received from the passengers are calculated to defray the 
cost of these superfluities, as well as the other expenses 
of their passage. I therefore felt a scruple with regard 
to paying my money to be applied to such purposes." 

Lodging in the steerage, he was much among the sea- 
men, and, "from a motion of love," took "sundry oppor- 
12 — 



178 CHARACTERISTICS. 

tunities with one of them at a time," and "labored," "in 
free conversation," " to turn their minds towards the fear 
of the Lord." Deeply he grieved over their oppression 
and distresses, and his lamentations, as set down in his 
Journal, are profoundly touching. "They mostly," he 
says, " appeared to take kindly what I said to them ; but 
their minds were so deeply impressed with the almost 
universal depravity among sailors that the poor creatures 
in their answers to me have revived in my remembrance 
that of the degenerate Jews a little before the captivity, 
as repeated by Jeremiah the prophet, ' There is no 
hope.'" 

-Arriving in London, he went straight to the Quaker 
meeting, which he knew to be in session. Coming in late 
and unannounced, his peculiar dress and manner nat- 
urally excited attention, and apprehension that he was an 
itinerant enthusiast. He presented his certificate from 
Friends in America, but the dissatisfaction still remained, 
and some one remarked that perhaps the stranger Friend 
might feel that his dedication of himself to this appre- 
hended service was accepted, without further labor, and 
that he might now feel free to return to his home ! John 
Woolman sat silent, it is stated, for a space, seeking the 
unerring counsel of Divine Wisdom. He was profoundly 
affected by the unfavorable reception he met with, and 
his tears flowed freely. The words, however, which he 
was permitted to utter, made a different impression on 
the meeting. A deep silence, it is said, prevailed over 
the assembly, many of whom were touched by the wise 
simplicity of the stranger's words and manner. At the 
conclusion, " the Friend who had advised against his 
further service rose up and humbly confessed his error, 
and avowed his full unity with the stranger." 

The low wages paid to English laborers, and the pov- 
erty and wretchedness visible on every hand, caused him 
to cry out, " Oh may the wealthy consider the poor ! " It 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 1 79 

gave him also great distress of mind to discover that in 
many instances members of his Society "mixed with the 
world in various sorts of traffic, carried on in impure 
channels." He found them loading ships engaged in the 
slave-trade, and trading as others in all kinds of super- 
fluities, till, he said, " dimness of sight came over many." 
" I have felt," he says, " in that which doth not deceive, 
that if Friends who have known the truth keep in that 
tenderness of heart where all views of outward gain are 
given up, and their trust is only in the Lord, he will gra- 
ciously lead some to be patterns of deep self-denial in 
things relating to trade and handicraft labor ; and others 
who have plenty of the treasures of this world will be ex- 
amples of a plain frugal life, and pay wages to such as 
they may hire more liberally than is now customary in 
some places." 

He " saw that people setting off their tables with silver 
vessels at entertainments was often stained with worldly 
glory," and he preferred not to drink from them. His 
sense of cleanliness was also affected as he traveled 
through the kingdom. " Some of the great," he says, 
" carry delicacy to a great height themselves, and yet real 
cleanliness is not generally promoted. Dyes being in- 
vented partly to please the eye and partly to hide dirt, I 
have felt, when traveling in dirtiness, and affected with 
unwholesome scents, a strong desire that the nature of 
dyeing cloth to hide dirt may be more fully considered. 
Real cleanliness becometh a holy people ; but hiding that 
which is not clean by coloring our garments seems con- 
trary "to the sweetness of sincerity." He declined to 
travel in stage-coaches, because the horses and drivers 
were cruelly used ; the former sometimes being killed by 
hard driving, and the latter sometimes frozen to death by 
exposure. "So great," he says, "is the hurry in the 
spirit of this world, that in aiming to do business quickly 
and to gain wealth, the creation at this day doth loudly 



l8o CHARACTERISTICS. 

groan." For the reasons mentioned, his travels in Eng- 
land were entirely on foot.- Sickness came upon him ; 
the climate and every thing seemed to be against him ; 
he was even sometimes in need. " I have," he says, near 
the end of his Journal, " known poverty of late." His 
mind, it appears, was greatly exercised by a sense of the 
intimate connection of luxury and oppression ; the burden 
of the laboring poor rested heavily upon him. In his 
lonely wanderings on foot through the rural districts, or 
in his temporary sojourn in crowded manufacturing towns, 
the eager competitions and earnest pursuit of gain of one 
class, and the poverty and physical and moral degrada- 
tion of another, so oppressed him that his health suffered 
and his strength failed. In his frequent mention through- 
out his Journal of trials and afflictions, he nowhere be- 
trays any personal solicitude, any merely selfish anxiety. 
He offered no prayers for special personal favors. He 
was, to use his own words, mixed with his fellow-creatures 
in their misery, and could not consider himself a distinct 
and separate being. His last public labor, says his emi- 
nent biographer, was a testimony in the York Meeting in 
behalf of the poor and enslaved. His last prayer on his 
death-bed was a commendation of his " fellow-creatures 
separated from the Divine harmony " to the Omnipotent 
Power, whom he had learned to call his Father. He died 
of small-pox in the city of York, on the 7th day of Octo- 
ber, 1772, aged fifty-two years. 

His simple words have a precious flavor of sweetness 
and purity and genuineness that is not surpassed, we be- 
lieve, in the whole range of literature. Passages like 
these, for instance : how delicious ! how Christlike ! 

" Selfish men may possess the earth : it is the meek 
alone who inherit it from the Heavenly Father free from 
all defilements and perplexities of unrighteousness." 

" Whoever rightly advocates the cause of some, thereby 
promotes the good of the whole." 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. l8l 

" If one suffers by the unfaithfulness of another, the 
mind, the most noble part of him that occasions the dis- 
cord, is thereby alienated from its true happiness." 

" There is harmony in the several parts of the Divine 
work in the hearts of men. He who leads them to cease 
from those gainful employments which are carried on in 
the wisdom which is from beneath delivers also from the 
desire of worldly greatness, and reconciles to a life so 
plain that a little suffices." 

" Oppression in the extreme appears terrible ; but op- 
pression in more refined appearances is nevertheless op- 
pression. To labor for a perfect redemption from the 
spirit of it is the great business of the whole family of 
Jesus Christ in this world." 

"There is a principle which is pure, placed in the hu- 
man mind, which in different places and ages hath had 
different names ; it is, however, pure, and proceeds from 
God. It is deep and inward, confined to no forms of 
religion nor excluded from any, when the heart stands in 
perfect sincerity. In whomsoever this takes root and 
grows, they become brethren." 

What precious society a man capable of so generous, 
so comprehensive, so profound a sentiment would have 
been to Buddha, Confucius, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, 
Thomas a Kempis, Fenelon, or Sir Thomas Browne ! 

" He who professeth to believe in one Almighty Cre- 
ator, and in his Son Jesus Christ, and is yet more intent 
on the honors, profits, and friendships of the world than 
he is, in singleness of heart, to stand faithful to the 
Christian religion, is in the channel of idolatry ; while 
the Gentile, who, notwithstanding some mistaken opinions, 
is established in the true principle of virtue, and humbly 
adores an Almighty Power, may be of the number that 
fear God and work righteousness." 

"To treasure up wealth for another generation, by 
means of the immoderate labor of those who in some 



1 82 CHARACTERISTICS. 

measure depend upon us, is doing evil at present, without 
knowing that wealth thus gathered may not be applied to 
evil purposes when we are gone. To labor hard, or cause 
others to do so, that we may live conformably to customs 
which our Redeemer discountenanced by his example, 
and which are contrary to Divine order, is to manure a 
soil for propagating an evil seed in the earth." 

" When house 'is joined to house, and field laid to field, 
until there is no place, and the poor are thereby strait- 
ened, though this is done by bargain and purchase, yet so 
far as it stands distinguished from universal love, so far 
that woe predicted by the prophet will accompany their 
proceedings. As he who first founded the earth was 
then the true proprietor of it, so he still remains, and 
though he hath given it to the children of men, so that 
multitudes of people have had their sustenance from it 
while they continued here, yet he hath never alienated 
it, but his right is as good as at first ; nor can any apply 
the increase of their possessions contrary to universal 
love, nor dispose of lands in a way which they know 
tends to exalt some by oppressing others, without being 
justly chargeable with usurpation." 

" I find that to be a fool as to worldly wisdom, and to 
commit my cause to God, not fearing to offend men, who 
take offense at the simplicity of truth, is the only way to 
remain unmoved at the sentiment of others." 

" Deep humility is a strong bulwark, and as we enter 
into it we find safety and true exaltation. The foolish- 
ness of God is wiser than man, and the weakness of God 
is stronger than man. Being unclothed of our own wis- 
dom, and knowing the abasement of the creature, we find 
that power to arise which gives health and vigor to us." 

" The love of ease and gain are the motives in general 
of keeping slaves, and men are wont to take hold of weak 
arguments to support a cause which is unreasonable. I 
have no interest on either side, save only the interest 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 1 83 

which I desire to have in the truth. I believe liberty is 
their right, and as I see they are not only deprived of it, 
but treated in other respects with inhumanity in many 
places, I believe he who is a refuge for the oppressed 
will, in his own time, plead their cause, and happy will it 
be for such as walk in uprightness before him." 

How like the sentiment and thought of John Brown, 
who died a martyr on the scaffold a little more than a 
hundred years after this prophecy was uttered ! 

" The natural man loveth eloquence, and many love to 
hear eloquent orations, and if there be not a careful at- 
tention to the gift, men who have once labored in the 
pure gospel ministry, growing weary of suffering, and 
ashamed of appearing weak, may kindle a fire, compass 
themselves about with sparks, and walk in the light, not 
of Christ, who is under suffering, but of that fire which 
they in departing from the gift have kindled, in order that 
those hearers who have left the meek, suffering state for 
worldly wisdom may be warmed with this fire and speak 
highly of their labors. That which is of God gathers to 
God, and that which is of the world is owned by the 
world." 

A little while before he died he asked for pen and ink, 
and wrote : "I believe my being here is in the wisdom of 
Christ ; I know not as to life or death." 

It will not lessen the value of these detached passages 
in the minds of the true disciples of our Divine Lord, 
that they are manifestly not written to subserve the inter- 
ests of a narrow sectarianism. They might have been 
penned, says his brother Whittier, by Fenelon in his time, 
or Robertson in ours, dealing as they do with Christian 
practice, — the life of Christ manifesting itself in purity 
and goodness, — rather than with the dogmas of theology. 
The underlying thought of all is simple obedience to the 
Divine word in the soul. " Not every one that saith unto 
me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, 



1 84 CHARACTERISTICS. 

but he that doeth the will of my Father in heaven." John 
Woolman's faith, like the Apostle's, is manifested by his 
labors, standing not in words but in the demonstration of 
the spirit, — a faith that works by love to the purifying of 
the heart. The entire outcome of this faith was love 
manifested in reverent waiting upon God, and in that un- 
tiring benevolence, that quiet but deep enthusiasm of 
humanity, which made his daily service to his fellow- 
creatures a hymn of praise to the common Father. 

John Woolman's religion was real Christianity, "which 
being too spiritual to be seen by us," saith old Dr. Donne, 
" doth therefore take an apparent body of good life and 
works." His life was religion incarnate, of perpetual good 
works, that had but little time to voice itself but in acts, — 
like the good woman's, who, after having bred a large 
family, and led a long life of devotion and self-sacrifice — 
worn out by care, and weary of her burdens — came at 
length to what was supposed to be her death-bed. A 
clergyman in the neighborhood thought it to be his duty 
to call upon her. He asked her in language usual with 
his sect if she had made her peace with her Maker ; to 
which she replied that she was not aware that there had 
been any trouble. John Woolman lived his religion, and 
so the world had faith in it. " Preachers say," said old 
John Selden, "Do as I say, not as I do. But if a phy- 
sician had the same disease upon him that I have, and he 
should bid me do one thing, and he do quite another, 
could I believe him? " 

"To the multitude," says the author of Ecce Homo, 
" religion will always mean what parsons talk about, what 
goes on in churches and chapels. . . . Religion, many 
will insist, means, and must mean, churches and clergy- 
men, and you determine the condition of it by ascertain- 
ing what proportion of the population goes to church, and 
whether the number of candidates for orders increases 
or diminishes, just as you ascertain the state of trade by 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 1 85 

looking at the returns of export and import. . . . Religion 
has been so defined, that morality can be separated from 
it, that the laws of the universe can be separated from it, 
that all noble and elevated acts can be separated from it ; 
what wonder then that nothing but a caput mortuum 
seems to remain?" " All Christians believe," says an- 
other eminent English writer, " that the blessed are the 
poor and humble, and those who are ill-used by the world ; 
that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a 
needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of 
heaven ; that they should judge not, lest they be judged ; 
that they should swear not at all ; that they should love 
their neighbor as themselves ; that if one take their cloak, 
they should give him their coat also ; that they should 
take no thought for the morrow ; that if they would be 
perfect, they should sell all that they have and give it to 
the poor. They are not insincere when they say that they 
believe these things. They do believe them, as people 
believe what they have always heard lauded and never 
discussed. But in the sense of that living belief which 
regulates conduct, they believe these doctrines just up to 
the point to which it is usual to act upon them. When- 
ever conduct is concerned, they look round for Mr. A. 
and B. to direct them how far to go in obeying Christ." 
By such sort of mere nominalism we are apt to get as 
far away from Christ as possible, and possibly without 
knowing it. A writer in Temple Bar states that the native 
trading community in Cyprus consists of Moslems, Jews, 
and Christians. Of these he says a European merchant 
can nearly always believe the first upon his simple word, 
the two latter he can rarely credit on oath, and the harder 
they swear the more certain one may be that they are 
stating what is not true. 

Theology is one thing and religion another. " Trav- 
elers have often observed," says Archibald Alison, in his 
essay on Chateaubriand, "that in a certain rank in all 



1 86 CHARACTERISTICS. 

countries manners are the same ; naturalists know, that 
at a certain elevation above the sea in all latitudes, we 
meet with the same vegetable productions ; and philos- 
ophers have often remarked, that in the highest class of 
intellects, opinions' on almost every subject in all ages 
and places are the same. A similar uniformity may be 
observed in the principles of the greatest writers of the 
world on religion ; and while the inferior followers of 
their different tenets branch out into endless divisions, 
and indulge in sectarian rancor, in the more lofty regions 
of intellect the principles are substantially the same, and 
the objects of all identical. So small a proportion do all 
the disputed points in theology bear to the great objects 
of religion, love to God, charity to man, and the subju- 
gation of human passion." There is, we are compelled 
to believe, a respectable amount of truth in the two fa- 
miliar lines of Pope : 

" For forms and creeds let graceless bigots fight ; 
He can't be wrong whose life is in the right." 

Dr. Holmes, expatiating in the Professor on the pos- 
sible church of the future, says : " The Broad Church, 
I think, will never be based on any thing that requires 
the use of language. Free Masonry gives an idea of 
such a church, and a brother is known and cared for in 
a strange land where no word of his can be understood. 
The apostle of this church may be a deaf mute carrying 
a cup of cold water to a thirsting fellow-creature. The 
cup of cold water does not require to be translated for a 
foreigner to understand it. I am afraid the only Broad 
Church possible is one that has its creed in the heart, 
and not in the head, — that we shall know its members 
by their fruits, and not by their words." 

John Woolman's religion was as broad as the brother- 
hood of man, and as boundless as Christian chanty. 
Wherever there was a man, there was a brother, good 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 1 87 

enough for him to love and worship with: alone, he 
communed with God. As with the hermit in Italy, who 
lived in a simple cottage on the top of a mountain, a mile 
from any habitation, Providence was his very next-door 
neighbor. His happiness was in duty. It is said of Col- 
lingwood that he never saw a vacant place ' in his estate 
but he took an acorn out of his pocket and popped it in. 
Woolman, also, wherever he found a human soul in which 
he thought the seed of practical Christianity would grow 
he planted it there. Not noisily or aggressively. He 
had nothing of the vice of rectitude. He did not insist 
authoritatively that you should ever and forever walk in 
his own remorselessly strait path. He did not dis- 
charge his moral pistol at you and knock you down with 
the but-end of it if you failed to pronounce him infalli- 
ble. He had not a particle of what has been called the 
wrath of celestial minds. Nor was he a motive-monger, 
like Walter Shandy, — a very dangerous sort of person 
for a man to sit by, either laughing or crying. He was 
most concerned about his own motives, and the good of 
his acts. He was never ill-humored or rude from an 
ostentatious love of speaking truth. He knew as well as 
any man the truth of the inscription upon one of the 
seals of the Mogul Sultan Achar, that " never a man was 
lost upon a straight road." He knew at the same time 
that the ways of men are crooked and will be ; that his 
own way was not perfectly straight, and could not be. 
Self he kept out of view as far as possible, but not osten- 
tatiously. In these days, it has been very truly said, part 
of the stock in trade of the unscrupulous self-seeker is 
sometimes a great parade of unselfishness : the man who 
never in his life really exerted himself for any other end 
than the advantage of number one, requests you to take 
notice that his sole end is the glory of God and the good 
of mankind. And the transparent pretext, which infuri- 
ates the perspicacious few, is found to succeed with the 



1 88 CHARACTERISTICS. 

undiscerning many. In John Woolman there was no 
parade of unselfishness, though unselfish he was as few- 
men in this world have been or will be. His peculiar 
self-sacrifice and self-denial were too genuine to be mis- 
taken j they commanded reverence without exciting de- 
rision. He possessed to a remarkable degree that qual- 
ity which Dr. Arnold calls moral thoughtfulness, which 
makes a man love Christ instead of being a fanatic, 
and love truth without being cold or hard. In Norse 
mythology, Odin's ravens, memory and reflection, are 
perched upon the god's shoulders, and whisper into his 
ear what they see and hear. He sends them out at day- 
break to fly over the world, and they come back at eve 
towards meal-time. Hence it is that Odin knows so 
much, and is called the raven-god. Woolman's quiet re- 
flection and boundless charity opened the windows of his 
mind to all winged suggestions, and his heart abounded 
in true wisdom. Peaceful and unaggressive, the way was 
sure to be opened to whatever he conceived to be his 
duty, and his very peacefulness preserved him in the dis- 
charge of it. Every good influence stands round such a 
man in any extremity. Three cubs, say the Buddhists, 
the lioness brings forth, five the tigress, but one the cow ; 
yet many are the meek cattle, few the beasts of prey. 
The fierce and grasping soon decay ; the universe pre- 
serves to the peaceful the heritage of the earth. 

The quiet influence of one wise man, who never bullies 
the world with his own excellence, may not be calculated. 
Confucius seldom claimed any superiority above his fel- 
low-creatures. He offered his advice to those who were 
willing to listen ; but he never spoke dogmatically ; he 
never attempted to tyrannize over the minds or hearts of 
his friends. " If we read his biography," says a distin- 
guished Orientalist, "we can hardly understand how a 
man whose life was devoted to such tranquil pursuits, and 
whose death scarcely produced a ripple on the smooth 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 1 89 

and silent surface of the Eastern world, could have left 
the impress of his mind on millions and millions of hu- 
man beings — an impress, which even now, after more 
than two thousand three hundred years, is clearly dis- 
cernible in the national character of the largest empire 
in the world." The lives and teachings of such men are 
like the mighty, noiseless influences of nature. In Java 
the vegetation has forced asunder and thrown down the 
largest blocks of masonry, and has inflicted no little dam- 
age upon the Hindoo ruins : literally has " the wild fig-tree 
split their monstrous idols." The Brighton emeralds, orig- 
inally bits of the thick bottoms of broken bottles, thrown 
purposely into the sea by the lapidaries of the place, are by 
the attrition of the shingle speedily converted into the 
form of natural pebbles, and sold at high prices. The Chi- 
nese are in the habit of producing pearls artificially by the 
introduction of small images of Buddha into the mussels, 
which in the course of time are covered with the pearly 
substance. We hardly think of the prodigious work of 
those quiet subsoilers, the common earth-worms. The 
ground is almost alive with them. Wherever mould is 
turned up, there these sappers and miners are turned up 
with it. They have been called nature's plowmen. They 
bore the stubborn soil in every direction, and render 
it pervious to air, rain, and the fibres of plants. With- 
out these auxiliaries the farmer, says Gilbert White, 
would find that his land would become cold, hard-bound, 
and sterile. The green mantle of vegetation which cov- 
ers the earth is dependent upon the worms which bur- 
row in the bowels of it. When the rose bud blossomed 
in the bower, the Persians have it, a nightingale said to 
the falcon, " How is it that thou, being silent, bearest the 
prize from all birds ? Thou hast not spoken a pleasing 
word to any one ; yet thy abode is the wrist of the king, 
and thy food the delicate partridge. I who produce a 
hundred musical gems in a moment have the worm for 



190 CHARACTERISTICS. 

my food and the thorn for my mansion." The falcon re- 
plied, " For once be all ear. I who perform a hundred 
acts repeat not one. Thou who performest not one deed 
displayest a thousand. Since I am all intelligence in the 
hunt, the king gives me dainty food and his wrist. Since 
thou art one entire motion of a tongue, eat worms and sit 
on thorns ; and so peace be with you." The Turks have 
a tale, that as a king of Bactria was pursuing the chase 
one day, he felt hungry, and sat down to eat. And while 
he was eating, a bee came, seized a morsel of bread, and 
flew slowly away with it. Wondering thereat, the king 
followed the bee, which led him to where sat on a bough 
a sparrow blind of both eyes, which opened its beak wide 
as soon as it heard the bee's humming. And the bee 
broke the bread into three pieces, fed the bird with them, 
and then flew away. When the king saw this wondrous 
work of God he renounced all earthly ties, and gave him- 
self up to the All-True. 

John Woolman's kindness went hand in hand with his 
quietness. He saw some good in every body, and was 
careful not to extinguish it. He never scolded. A saint 
would be damned by unintermitted scolding. It was 
Mary Lamb, we believe, who said that a babe is fed with 
milk and praise. John Woolman did not blame whom 
he sought to benefit, if he did not praise. No man was 
so bad as to appear in his eyes wholly blameworthy, and 
so he easily gained the ears of the most abandoned. In 
Sir William Jones's Persian grammar may be found the 
beautiful story from Nizami. It cannot be too often re- 
peated for the lesson it teaches. One evening Jesus arrived 
at the gates of a certain city, and sent his disciples for- 
ward to prepare supper, while he himself, intent on doing 
good, walked through the streets into the market-place. 
And he saw at the corner of the market some people 
gathered together, looking at an object on the ground ; 
and he drew near to see what it might be. It was a dead 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 191 

dog, with a halter round his neck, by which he appeared 
to have been dragged through the dirt ; and a viler, a 
more abject, or more unclean thing never met the eyes 
of man. And those who stood by looked on with abhor- 
rence. " Faugh ! " said one, stopping his nose, " it pol- 
lutes the air ! " " How long," said another, " shall this 
foul beast offend our sight ? " " Look at his torn hide," 
said a third ; " one could not even cut a shoe out of it." 
" And his ears," said a fourth, " all draggled and bleed- 
ing ! " " No doubt," said a fifth, " he has been hanged 
for thieving." And Jesus heard them, and looking down 
compassionately on the dead creature, he said, " Pearls 
are not equal to the whiteness of his teeth ! " Then the 
people turned towards him with amazement, and said 
among themselves, " Who is this ? It must be Jesus of 
Nazareth, for only he could find something to pity and 
approve in a dead dog." And being ashamed, they 
bowed their heads before him, and went each on his way. 
We all know how even brutes are influenced by kind- 
ness. A market-gardener had a very fine cow that was 
milked week after week by hired men. He observed that 
the amount of butter he carried to market weighed about 
a pound more on each alternate week. He watched the 
men, and tried the cow after they had finished milking, 
but always found that there was no milk to be had. He 
finally asked the Scotch girl who took care of the milk if 
she could account for the difference. " Why, yes," she 
said. " When Jim milks he says to the cow, ' So, my 
pretty creature, so ! ' But when Sam milks he hits her on 
the hips with the edge of the pail, and says, ' Hoist, you 
old brute ! ' " Hawthorne, in his English Note-Books, 
speaks of a donkey that stubbornly refused to come out 
of a boat which had brought him across the Mersey ; at 
last, after many kicks had been applied, and other perse- 
cutions of that kind, a man stepped forward, addressing 
him affectionately, " Come along, brother," and the don- 
key obeyed at once. 



I92 CHARACTERISTICS. 

" I once asked a successful peach-grower," said Pro- 
fessor Venable, " how it was that he always had plenty of 
excellent fruit, while his neighbors, with apparent equal 
facilities, failed more than half the time to obtain any 
crop at all, and always failed to raise first-rate peaches. 
Said he : ' 1 know my trees ; they tell me what they 
need ; I have a special interest in every twig of this or- 
chard. A peach-tree will not produce unless you love 
it.' " 

Some years ago a pretty French girl sold violets at the 
steps of one of the New York hotels. She had her reg- 
ular customers, who could always be counted upon to 
purchase. One morning very early we happened to be 
passing just when she was taking her flowers out of her 
basket to display them on the table. " Your violets look 
very beautiful this morning," we said. " Yes," she an- 
swered, with a glow upon her face ; " when I went out 
into the garden at day-break, they were all talking to one 
another ! " Then we knew why her violets were always 
so beautiful. She loved them, and they grew better for 
her. 

Moral honesty was a conspicuous trait in the character 
of John Woolman. A religion without it he could not 
comprehend ; certainly it was not the religion of Christ. 
"They that cry down moral honesty," said old John Sel- 
den, " cry down that which is a great part of religion, my 
duty towards God, and my duty towards man. What 
care I to see a man run after a sermon, if he cozens and 
cheats as soon as he comes home ? " The integrity of 
John Woolman was complete : it was so perfect as to ap- 
pear " a law of nature with him, rather than a choice or a 
principle." 

His good influence, everywhere that he went — in his 
own America and in London streets — amongst slave- 
drivers and sailors — the worst men and the most aban- 
doned women — reminds us, in some respects, of the monk 



THE CHRISTIANITY OF WOOLMAN. 193 

Basle, of whom it is related that, being excommunicated 
by the Pope, he was, at his death, sent in charge of an 
angel to find a fit place of suffering in hell • but such was 
the excellence of his manner that, wherever he went, he 
was received gladly, and civilly treated, even by the most 
uncivil angels ; and, when he came to discourse with 
them, instead of contradicting or forcing him, they took 
his part and adopted his manners : and even good angels 
came from far to see him, and take up their abode with 
him. The angel that was sent to find a place of torment 
for him attempted to remove him to a worse pit, but with 
no better success ; for such was the spirit of the monk, 
that he found something to praise in every place and 
company, though in hell, and made a kind of heaven of 
it. At last the escorting angel returned with his prisoner 
to them that sent him, saying, that no phlegethon could 
be found that would burn him ■ for that, in whatever con- 
dition, Basle remained incorrigibly Basle. The legend 
says, his sentence was remitted, and he was allowed to 
go into heaven, and was canonized as a saint. 

John Woolman was pure, and in every situation re- 
mained pure. It has been said by naturalists that hun- 
ters, when in pursuit of the ermine, spread with mire all 
the passes leading to its haunts, to which they drive it, 
knowing that it will submit to be taken rather than defile 
itself. John Woolman was so pure that in any extremity 
he would have suffered everything rather than be defiled. 

He was a Christian, and lived very near the Divine 
pattern. He loved God and his fellow-man. The Golden 
Rule was his rule of life : he applied it, and lived by it. 
Christian Faith, such as his, is " a grand cathedral, with 
divinely pictured windows. Standing without, you see 
no glory, nor can possibly imagine any ; standing within, 
every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable 
splendors." 

Two miles out of Cracow, the ancient capital of Po- 
13 



194 CHARACTERISTICS. 

land, stands the Hill of Kosciuszko. It has received its 
name from a lofty mound of earth which was heaped up 
on the top of it in honor of the patriot after his death. 
Nobles, burghers, ladies, labored with their own hands in 
piling it up i bags and baskets filled with earth were 
brought from every part of the dominions of the ancient 
Polish kingdom to be added to the heap ; and thus it 
was raised in a steep grass-covered cone, to a height of 
more than eighty feet above the top of the hill. Some 
such everlasting monument should be erected to the 
memory of Woolman. A vast plateau might be selected, 
sacred forever to the purpose, and upon it, if possible, 
might be deposited, by every Christian, every struggling 
poor man, every man who has been a serf or a slave, his 
tribute of earth, that so a mighty mountain might be 
raised, to tell to all the world that such a man as John 
Woolman had lived. 



VIII. 

JOHN RANDOLPH AND JOHN BROWN. 

Two of the really great men that America has pro- 
duced were John Randolph and John Brown. We speak 
of them in the order of chronology. Two more antithetic 
types could hardly be named. One was a born aristocrat, 
the other a born democrat, and as such they incarnated 
the two civilizations that have been in irreconcilable con- 
flict since the foundation of the Nation, and that finally 
produced the Civil War. 

John Randolph of Roanoke, to use his own language, 
" was ushered into this world of woe " on the second day 
of June, 1773. The mansion-house in which he was born 
is described as of ample proportions, with offices and ex- 
tended wings, and as not an unworthy representative of 
the baronial days in which it was built — when Virginia 
cavaliers, under the title of gentlemen, -with their broad 
domain of virgin soil, and long retinue of servants, lived 
in a style of elegance and profusion, not inferior to that 
of the barons of England. The first of his name that 
emigrated to Virginia was Colonel William Randolph, an 
English gentleman, who died in 1711. He was the father 
of seven sons and two daughters, who became the pro- 
genitors of a widespread and numerous race, embracing 
the most wealthy families, and many of the most distin- 
guished names in Virginia history. His descendants were 
active promoters of the Revolution. John, the father of 
John of Roanoke, with two other relatives, sold forty 
slaves, and with the money purchased powder for the use 
of the colony. He married Jane Boiling, a descendant 



I96 CHARACTERISTICS. 

of Pocahontas, the beautiful Indian princess, daughter of 
Powhatan, between whom and Randolph there was said 
to be a striking resemblance. 

The birthplace of Randolph, before referred to, was 
consumed by fire, also, the home of his childhood, also, 
the house where he spent the first fifteen years of his 
manhood. He was asked by a friend, after the latter 
place was burned, why he did not write something to 
leave behind him. "Too late, sir, too late," was the re- 
ply ; " all I ever wrote perished in the flames ; it is too 
late to restore it now." He felt and owned himself to 
be a child of destiny • he had a work given him to do, 
but some cross fate prevented ; he failed to fulfill his des- 
tiny, and was wretched. " My whole name and race," he 
was heard to say, " lie under a curse. I am sure I feel 
the curse cleaving to me." 

As a child, he is described as delicate, reserved, and 
beautiful. He said of himself that " but for a spice of 
the devil in his temper," his delicacy and effeminacy of 
complexion would have consigned him to the distaff or the 
needle. Before he was four years old, he was known to 
swoon away in a fit of passion, and with difficulty could 
be restored : " an evidence of the extreme delicacy of his 
constitution, and the uncontrollable ardor of a temper 
that required a stronger frame to repress and restrain it." 
In those fits of passion, his mother only, by her caresses, 
was able to soothe him. She was the one only human 
being, he said, who understood him. She was a woman, 
we are informed, not only of superior personal attrac- 
tions, but excelled all others of her clay in strength of 
intellect. Her death, when he was fifteen years old, nearly 
broke his heart. She was a member of the Church of 
England, a faith from which, we are assured, her son never 
long departed. She carefully guarded his associations. 
" He was allowed," it was said, " to come in contact with 
nothing low, vulgar, or mean." So, by training, as well 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 1 97 

as by natural bent, the child became "father of the 
man." 

Some attention was paid to his education at home by 
his step-father and by his mother. He was too delicate, 
however, to be confined to study, and having " a spice of 
the devil in his temper," not much progress was made. 
But he was not idle. There was a certain closet, it is 
known, to which he stole away and secreted himself when- 
ever he could. It was well stored with good books. Be- 
fore he was eleven years of age he had read Voltaire's 
History of Charles XII. of Sweden, Humphry Clinker, 
Reynard the Fox, Shakespeare, the Arabian Nights, Gold- 
smith's Roman History, an old History of Braddock's 
War, Don Quixote, Gil Bias, Quintus Curtius, Plutarch, 
Pope's Homer, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver, Tom Jones, 
Orlando Furioso, and Thomson's Seasons ! Fit resource 
for the " thin-skinned, sensitive, impulsive, imaginative 
boy," subject to " fits of passion and swooning." " I have 
been all my life," he said, " the creature of impulse, the 
sport of chance, the victim of my own uncontrolled and 
uncontrollable sensations ; of a poetic temperament. I 
admire and pity all who possess this temperament." 

In the year 1781 the family were hastened from their 
home by the invasion of Virginia by Benedict Arnold, — 
Mr. Tucker, young Randolph's step-father, joining Gen- 
eral Greene, then manoeuvring before Cornwallis's army 
on the borders of North Carolina and Virginia, and after- 
ward joining La Fayette, with whom he continued until 
the capture of Cornwallis at Yorktown. John was left 
with his mother during this stirring period. Her precepts, 
it is easy to believe, were law to his plastic mind. When 
riding over the vast Roanoke estates one day, she took 
John up behind her, and waving her hand over the broad 
acres spread before them, she said, " Johnny, all this land 
belongs to you and your brother Theodorick ; it is your 
father's inheritance. When you get to be a man you 



198 CHARACTERISTICS. 

must not sell your land ; it is the first step to ruin for a 
boy to part with his father's home : be sure to keep it as 
long as you live. Keep your land and your land will 
keep you." In relating this anecdote, Mr. Randolph said 
it made such an impression on his mind that it governed 
his future life. He was confident it saved him from many 
errors. " He never did part with his father's home. His 
attachment to the soil, the old English law of inherit- 
ance, and a landed aristocracy, constituted the most re- 
markable trait in his character." After the Virginia law 
of descents was changed, he said, " The old families of 
Virginia will form connections with low people, and sink 
into the mass of overseers' sons and daughters ; and this 
is the legitimate, nay, inevitable conclusion to which Mr. 
Jefferson and his leveling system has brought us." 

The next two years, from nine till eleven, he spent at 
schools in Orange county and the city of Williamsburg. 
At the latter, it is related, the boys were in the habit of 
acting plays in the original language from Plautus and 
Terence. John was always selected to perform the fe- 
male parts. His feminine appearance, and the " spice of 
the devil in his temper," rendered him, it was said, pecul- 
iarly fitted for that purpose, and his performance was ad- 
mirable. His proud temper and reserved manners pre- 
vented him from forming any intimate associations with 
his school-fellows. He, it is stated, "shunned vulgar 
society, and repelled familiarity." 

At eleven he went with his parents to the island of 
Bermuda, where he remained eighteen months. While 
there he read Chatterton and Rowley, Young and Gay. 
Percy's Reliques and Chaucer became his favorites. A 
year or two after his return from Bermuda, he went to 
Princeton, thence to Columbia College, in New York- 
" At Princeton College," he says, " where I spent a few 
months, the prize of elocution was borne away by mouth- 
ers and ranters. I never would speak if I could possi- 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 1 99 

bly avoid it, and when I could not, repeated without ges- 
ture, the shortest piece that I had committed to memory. 
I was then as conscious of my superiority over my com- 
petitors in delivery and elocution, as I am now that they 
are sunk in oblivion ; and I despised the award and the 
umpires in the bottom of my heart. I believe that there 
is nowhere such foul play as among professors and 
schoolmasters ; more especially if they are priests. I 
have had a contempt for college honors ever since." 

In New York he took much interest in passing events. 
His letters were considered very extraordinary for a boy 
of fifteen. One of them was upon " alien duties " exacted 
by the custom-house there ; another described with par- 
ticularity the first inauguration of Washington as Presi- 
dent. 

At sixteen he had abandoned classical study, turning 
his attention and reflection to other fields. While yet 
a youth, he was in daily intercourse with statesmen and 
men of learning. He enjoyed great and rare opportuni- 
ties for acquiring information on those subjects towards 
which his mind, he said, had " a precocious proclivity." 
He was a constant attendant on the sittings of the first 
Congress, which sat in New York. " I was at Federal 
Hall," he said long afterwards, in a speech ; " I saw 
Washington, but could not hear him take the oath to sup- 
port the Federal Constitution. The Constitution was in 
a chrysalis state. I saw what Washington did not see ; 
but two other men in Virginia saw it — George Mason 
and Patrick Henry — the poison under its wings" — 
meaning too great a consolidation of power in the Gen- 
eral Government, and too small a recognition of the 
rights of the States. With Henry, also, he saw the " aw- 
ful squintings towards monarchy " in the Executive. He 
was, says his biographer, bred up in the school of Mason 
and of Henry. His step-father, his uncles, his brother, 
and all with whom he associated, imbibed the sentiments 



200 CHARACTERISTICS. 

of those statesmen, shared their devotion to the princi- 
ples and the independence of the Commonwealth of Vir- 
ginia, and participated in all their objections to the new 
government. Young Randolph, as we have seen, was a 
constant attendant on the debates of the first Congress, 
which had devolved on it the delicate task of organizing 
the government, and setting its wheels in motion. It was 
amid these scenes, and by associating with such men, 
that his political principles were formed and established, 
and from which he never swerved. His jealousy of the 
power of the Federal Government, and his zeal for the 
rights of the States, increased rather than diminished. 
Upon the removal of the seat of government to Philadel- 
phia, he went with it, where he remained, with short 
intervals, till the spring of 1 794, when he returned to Vir- 
ginia. 

He became extremely fond of the writings of Edmund 
Burke, and they are said by Garland, in his careful his- 
tory of his character, proclivities, and career, to have 
been the key to his political opinions. In after life, we 
are told, as he grew in experience, those opinions became 
more and more assimilated to the doctrines of his great 
master. His position in society, his large hereditary 
possessions, his pride of ancestry, his veneration for the 
Commonwealth of Virginia, her ancient laws and institu- 
tions ; his high estimation of the rights of property in 
the business of legislation, — all conspired to shape his 
thoughts, and mould them in matters pertaining to do- 
mestic polity after the fashion of those who have faith in 
the old, the long-established, and the venerable. 

While in Philadelphia, he attended several courses of 
lectures on anatomy and physiology. In April, 1794, he 
returned to Virginia. In June he was twenty-one years 
old, when he took upon himself the management of his 
vast patrimonial estates. At twenty-three he had the 
appearance of a youth of sixteen, and was not grown. 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 201 

He grew, it is said, a full head taller after this period. 
The death of his oldest brother at about this time, was a 
terrible blow to him. A relative, who slept in the room 
under his, said she never -waked in the night that she did 
not hear him moving about, sometimes striding across 
the floor, and exclaiming, "Macbeth hath murdered 
sleep ! Macbeth hath murdered sleep ! " She knew him 
to have his horse saddled in the dead of night, and ride 
over the plantation with loaded pistols. His natural 
temper, we are informed, became more repulsive ; he had 
no confidential friend, nor would any tie, however sa- 
cred, excuse inquiry. He was never in one place long 
enough to study much, yet he was known to turn over the 
leaves of a book carelessly, then lay it down, and tell 
more about it than those who had studied it. 

In the winter of 1799, m tne twenty-sixth year of his 
age, he was announced as a candidate for Congress. On 
March court day, the venerable Patrick Henry and the 
youthful John Randolph met, for the first time, at Char- 
lotte Court House — the one to make his last speech, the 
other his first — the one the candidate of George Wash- 
ington for a seat in the legislature of Virginia, the other 
a self-announced candidate for Congress — the one the 
champion of the Federal, the other the champion of the 
Republican cause. The occasion and event will long be 
memorable. The young man, says the historian of the 
contest, who was to answer the venerable orator, if in- 
deed the multitude suspected that any one would dare 
venture on a reply, was unknown to fame. A tall, slen- 
der, effeminate-looking youth was he ; light hair, combed 
back into a well-adjusted cue — pale countenance, a beard- 
less chin, bright, quick, hazel eye, blue frock, buff small- 
clothes, and fair-top boots. He was doubtless known to 
many on the court green as the little Jack Randolph they 
had frequently seen dashing by on wild horses, from one 
of his estates to another. A few knew him more inti- 



202 CHARACTERISTICS. 

mately, but none had ever heard him speak in public, or 
even suspected that he could make a speech. His 
friends knew his powers, his fluency in conversation, his 
ready wit, his polished satire, his extraordinary knowl- 
edge of men and affairs ; but still he was about to enter 
on an untried field, and all those brilliant faculties might 
fail him, as they had so often failed men of genius be- 
fore. 

Henry, old and feeble, spoke first, in his usual eloquent 
manner, for two hours. Randolph followed. He spoke, 
it is said, for three hours ; all that time the people, stand- 
ing on their feet, hung with breathless silence on his lips. 
His youthful appearance, boyish tones, clear, distinct, 
thrilling utterance ; his graceful action, bold expression, 
fiery energy, and manly thoughts, struck the multitude 
with astonishment. A bold genius and an orator of the 
first order had suddenly burst upon them, and dazzled 
them with his power and brilliancy. The orators, both 
of whom were elected, dined together after the contest, 
and Randolph ever after venerated the memory of Henry, 
who died in a few weeks. 

Randolph's first speech in Congress was on a resolu- 
tion to repeal an act to augment the army. It was ener- 
getic and fierce, and in it he applied the epithet u raga- 
muffins " to the soldiers enlisted in the army ; which 
caused him to be insulted by two young officers in the 
theatre, of which insult he complained in plain language 
to the President, John Adams. The President enclosed 
Randolph's letter to the House of Representatives, with 
a not very agreeable intimation as to its " matter and 
style." The affair created much excitement throughout 
the country, and was considered by Randolph and his 
friends " as but one of a series of events that had for 
their end the subjugation of the people to the will of the 
federal oligarchy." 

He was too impatient and violent to be trusted as a 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 203 

leader. He suspected corruption in many men connected 
with the administration, and he denounced them unspar- 
ingly. What had been called the " colossus of turpitude, 
the Yazoo speculation," was the especial object of his 
violent denunciation. 

In the midst of all this fever and distraction, the issue 
of an unfortunate love affair with one whom he said he 
loved more than his " own soul, or the God that made 
it," nearly unhinged his mind. His letters to his friends 
about this time are full of wretchedness and misery. He 
purposed flying across the sea, but stayed at home to 
brood. To a friend who was miserable, he said and 
wrote, " I, too, am wretched." 

Notwithstanding, he took a leading part in every debate 
on the floor of Congress. The first fourteen years of 
his public service covered discussions of an exciting 
nature relating to our affairs with France, Spain, and 
England, the Embargo, the Gunboat , scheme, and the 
war with Great Britain. The latter he opposed with all 
the vehemence and vigor of his mind and passions. For 
that opposition and for other reasons he was driven into 
retirement. The election in the spring of 1813 resulted 
in his defeat, after a contest of prodigious energy and 
desperation. 

He said the defeat relieved him " from an odious thrall- 
dom." He retired to his home at Roanoke, which he de- 
scribed as " a savage solitude," where he lived in the 
utmost seclusion. The only companion of his solitude 
was a young relative he had taken to live with him, whom 
he educated with much care and at great expense. " It 
is indeed," he wrote to a friend, " a life of seclusion that 
I live here, uncheckered by a single ray of enjoyment. I 
try to forget myself in books ; but that ' pliability of man's 
spirit ' which yields him up to the illusions of the ideal 
world, is gone from me forever." " For my part," writing 
again to the same friend, " it requires an effort to take an 



204 CHARACTERISTICS. 

interest in any thing ; and it seems to be strange that 
there should be found inducements strong enough to 
carry on the business of the world." He complained of 
violent palpitations of the heart. "When the fit is on," 
he said, " it may be seen through my dress across the 
room." Some months afterward he wrote, " Since the 
hot weather set in, I have been in a state of collapse, 
and am as feeble as an infant — with all this I am tor- 
tured, with rheumatism, or gout, a wretched cripple, and 
my mind is yet more weak and diseased than my body. 
I hardly know myself, so irresolute and timid have I be- 
come. In short, I hope that there is not another creature 
in the world as unhappy as myself. This I can say to 
you. To the world I endeavor to put on a different coun- 
tenance, and hold a bolder language : but it is sheer hy- 
pocrisy, assumed, to guard against the pity of mankind." 
About the same time he wrote to the same friend, " On 
the terms by which I hold it, life is a curse, from which 
I would willingly escape, if I knew where to fly. I have 
lost my relish for reading ; indeed, I could not devour 
even the Corsair with the zest that Lord Byron's pen gen- 
erally inspires." 

Two years after his defeat for Congress he was elected 
again. His candidacy brought out a swarm of detractors, 
whom he refused to answer. " It is too late in the day," 
he said, " to vindicate my public character before a peo- 
ple whom I represented fourteen years, and whom, if they 
do not now know me, never will. I therefore abstain 
from all places of public resort, as well from inclination 
as principle." After the election, he said, "I do assure 
you with the utmost sincerity, that, so far as I am per- 
sonally concerned, I cannot but regret the partiality of 
my friends, who insisted on holding me up on this occa- 
sion. I am engrossed by sentiments of a far different 
character, and I look forward to the future in this world, 
to say nothing of the next, with anticipations that forbid 
any idle expression of exultation." 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 205 

Mr. Clay was his great antagonist. Although a Re- 
publican, he was accused of being a Federalist at heart, 
and opposed to the doctrine of State rights. For that, 
above every thing, Randolph was ever the bold champion. 
He thus refers to a memorable effort, in a letter dated 
Feb'y 23, 1820, the day after the speech was delivered: 
" Yesterday I spoke four hours and a half to as attentive 
an audience as ever listened to a public speaker. Every 
eye was riveted upon me, save one, (Mr. Clay's,) and that 
was sedulously and affectedly turned away. The ears, 
however, were drinking up the words as those of the royal 
Dane imbibed the 'juice of cursed hebenon,' though not, 
like his, unconscious of the 'leperous distilment.' " 

The peculiar state of his health, the excitement inci- 
dent to the settlement of the Missouri question, and the 
death of his friend Commodore Decatur — who fell in a 
duel with Commodore Barron, March 20, 1820 — all con- 
tributed to produce a state of mind bordering on insanity. 
He went into the United States Branch Bank at Rich- 
mond and asked for writing materials to write a check. 
He dipped his pen in the ink, and finding that it was 
black, asked for red ink, saying, " I now go for blood." 
He filled the check up, and asked the cashier to write his 
name to it. The cashier refused to write his name ; and 
after importuning him for some time, he called for black 
ink, and signed John Randolph, of Roanoke, X his mark. 
At about the same time, as the same person, the cashier, 
was passing along the street, Mr. Randolph hailed him in 
a louder voice than usual. The first question he asked 
the gentleman was, whether he knew of a good ship in 
the James River in which he could get a passage for 
England. He said he had been sick of a remittent and 
intermittent fever for forty days, and his physician said 
he must go to England. He was told there were no ships 
there fit for his accommodation, and that he had better 
go to New York, and sail from that port. " Do you think," 



206 CHARACTERISTICS. 

said he, " I would give my money to those who are ready 
to make my negroes cut my throat ? If I cannot go to 
England from a Southern port I will not go at all." A 
ship in the river was then recommended to him. He 
asked the name of it, and was told it was the " Henry 
Clay." He threw up his arms and exclaimed, " Henry 
Clay ! No, sir ! I will never step on the planks of a 
ship of that name." Soon after, he drew all his funds out 
of the bank, and put them in English guineas, — saying 
there was no danger of them. His " madness," as they 
called it, lasted but for a few months. In the autumn 
his understanding was as good as ever. 

The summer he had spent at Roanoke. " The boys," as 
he called his wards, were off at school, and he found the 
solitude as usual, nearly intolerable. His letters written 
at this time abound in wise thoughts. " The true cure for 
maladies like yours," he says to one who had written in a 
desponding tone, " is employment. ' Be not solitary ; be 
not idle ! ' was all that Burton could advise." " One of 
the best and wisest men I ever knew has often said to 
me, that a decayed family could never recover its loss 
of rank in the world, until the members of it left off talk- 
ing and dwelling upon its former opulence." " Nothing 
can be more respectable than the independence that 
grows out of self denial. The man who, by abridging his 
wants, can find time to devote to the cultivation of his 
mind, or the aid of his fellow-creatures, is a being far 
above the plodding sons of industry and gain. He is a 
spirit of the noblest order." " You know my opinion of 
female society. Without it, we should degenerate into 
brutes. To a young man, nothing is so important as a 
spirit of devotion (next to his Creator) to some virtuous 
and amiable woman, whose image may occupy his heart, 
and guard it from the pollution which besets it on all 
sides." " If matrimony has its cares, celibacy has no 
pleasures. A Newton, or a mere scholar, may find em- 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 2C>7 

ployment in study; a man of literary taste can receive, 
in books, a powerful auxiliary ; but a man must have a 
bosom friend, and children around him, to cherish and 
support the dreariness of old age." Before leaving home 
he wrote his will, which emancipated all of his slaves, and 
provided for their maintenance. 

In the spring of 1822, immediately after a speech of 
two hours against the Bankrupt Bill, he set out for New 
York to embark for Liverpool. The sea seemed to stim- 
ulate him. His social talents were exhibited in a manner 
highly delightful to the passengers. " He proposed one 
fine morning," said one of them, " to read (Halleck's) 
Fanny to me aloud, and on deck, where we were enjoying 
a fine breeze and noonday sun. It was the most amus- 
ing ' reading ' I ever listened to. The notes were much 
longer than the poem ; for, whenever he came to a well- 
known name, up went his spectacles and down went the 
book, and he branched off into some anecdote of the per- 
son or of his family. Thus we ' progressed ' slowly from 
page to page, and it actually consumed three mornings 
before we reached — 

' And music ceases when it rains 
In Scuclder's balcony.' " 

His visit to the House of Lords was characteristic. 
He refused to be admitted at the lower door. " Do you 
suppose," he said to the friend who held the tickets, "that 
I would consent to struggle with and push through the 
crowd of persons who, for two long hours, must fight their 
way in at the lower door ? Oh, no sir ! I shall do no 
such thing; and if I cannot enter as a gentleman com- 
moner I go not at all." They separated — the friend to 
struggle in with the crowd, half suffocated by the long 
and perilous exertion. " Casting a glance toward the 
throne," said he, " soon after my entrance, to my no small 
surprise and envy, I beheld ' Randolph of Roanoke ' in 



208 CHARACTERISTICS. 

all his glory, walking in most leisurely, and perfectly at 
home, alongside of Canning, Lord Castlereagh, Sir Robert 
Peel, and many other distinguished members of the House 
of Commons." 

While in England he had interviews of the most inter- 
esting character with Mrs. Fry, Moore, Miss Edgeworth, 
Wilberforce, and others, besides making a speech at a 
meeting of the African Institution in London, expressing 
in his usual vigorous way an abhorrence of the slave- 
trade. 

The following winter, from his place on the floor of 
Congress, he spoke a cheering word for the Greeks. The 
speech was one of his best, and attracted great attention. 
Other speeches followed on Internal Improvements, the 
Tariff, and other public questions. The next summer he 
made another voyage, to Europe. In the spring of 1825 
he was again a candidate for Congress — "that bear gar- 
den," he called it, " of the House of Representatives." 
On the 1 8th of April — the day of the election — he 
made a speech at Prince Edward Court House, which is 
referred to by Garland — who was then a boy — in his 
biography of Randolph. The theme of his discourse 
was the " alarming encroachments of the General Gov- 
ernment upon the rights of the States." " I shall never 
forget the manner of the man," says Garland. " The 
tall, slender figure, swarthy complexion, animated counte- 
nance ; the solemn glance, that passed leisurely over the 
audience, hushed into deep silence before him, and bend- 
ing forward to catch every look, every motion and every 
word of the inspired orator ; the clear, silver tones of his 
voice ; the distinct utterance — full, round expression, 
and emphasis of his words; the graceful bend and easy 
motion of the person, as he turned from side to side ; the 
rapid, lightning-like sweep of the hand when something 
powerful was uttered ; the earnest, fixed gaze, that fol- 
lowed, as if searching into the hearts of his auditors, 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 2CX) 

while his words were telling upon them ; then, the omi- 
nous pause, and the movement of that long, slender fore- 
finger, that accompanied the keen, cutting sarcasm of his 
words — all these I can never forget." 

The following December he was elected to the Senate. 
In his speech before that body upon the message of the 
President, John Quincy Adams, in answer to resolutions 
relating to the Panama Mission, Mr. Randolph said: 
* Who made him a judge of our usages ? Who consti- 
tuted him ? He has been a professor, I understand. I 
wish he had left off the pedagogue when he got into the 
Executive chair. Who made him the censor morum of 
this body? Will any one answer this question ? Yes or 
no ? Who ? Name the person. Above all, who made 
him the searcher of hearts, and gave him the right, by an 
innuendo black as hell, to blacken our motives ? Blacken 
our motives ! I did not say that then. I was more under 
self-command ; I did not use such strong language. I 
said, if he could borrow the eye of Omniscience himself, 
and look into every bosom here ; if he could look into 
that most awful, calamitous, and tremendous of all gulfs, 
the naked unveiled human heart, stripped of all its cover- 
ing of self-love, exposed naked, as to the eye of God — I 
said if he could do that, he was not, as President of the 
United States, entitled to pass upon our motives, although 
he saw and knew them to be bad. I said, if he had con- 
verted us to the Catholic religion, and was our father 
confessor, and every man in this House at the footstool 
of the confessional had confessed a bad motive to him by 
the laws of his church, as by this Constitution, above the 
law and above the church, he, as President of the United 
States, could not pass on our motives, though we had told 
him with our own lips our motives, and confessed they 
were bad. I said this then, and I say it now. Here I 
plant my foot ; here I fling defiance right into his teeth 
before the American people ; here I throw the gauntlet to 
14 



2IO CHARACTERISTICS. 

him and the bravest of his compeers, to come forward 
and defend these miserable lines : ' Involving a departure, 
hitherto, as far as I am informed, without example, from 
that usage, and upon the motives for which, not being in- 
formed of them, I do not feel myself competent to decide.' 
Amiable modesty ! I wonder we did not, all at once, fall 
in love with him, and agree, una voce, to publish our pro- 
ceedings, except myself, for I quitted the Senate ten min- 
utes before the vote was taken. I saw what was to follow ; 
I knew the thing would not be done at all, or would be 
done unanimously. Therefore, in spite of the remon- 
strance of friends, I went away, not fearing that any one 
would doubt what my vote would have been, if I had 
stayed. After twenty-six hours' exertion, it was time to 
give in. I was defeated, horse, foot, and dragoons — cut 
up, and clean broke down by the coalition of Blifil and 
Black George — by the combination, unheard of till then, 
of the puritan with the blackleg." 

The epithet " blackleg," as every body knew, referred 
to Clay, and resulted in a duel. Randolph did not deny 
the use of the offensive word. The parties met the suc- 
ceeding evening at four o'clock on the banks of the Po- 
tomac. The sun was just setting behind the blue hills. 
An accident occurred by which Randolph's pistol dis- 
charged, with the muzzle down, before the word was given. 
Clay at once exclaimed that it was an accident. On the 
word being given, Clay fired, without effect, Randolph 
discharging his pistol in the air. The moment Clay saw 
that Randolph had thrown away his fire, "with a gush of 
sensibility," he instantly approached Randolph, and said 
with emotion, " I trust in God, my dear sir, you are un- 
touched ; I would not have harmed you for a thousand 
worlds." 

One of his greatest speeches was on Negro Slavery in 
South America. His views were radical on every thing 
relating to slavery. He said in a letter to a friend, " From 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 211 

the institution of the Passover to the latest experience of 
man, it would be found, that no two distinct people could 
occupy the same territory, under one government, but in 
the relation of master and vassal." 

Early in May, 1826, before the adjournment of Con- 
gress, he went to Europe for a third time. He traveled 
extensively in England, Wales, and on the Continent. 
The next year he was defeated for the Senate, but was 
re-elected by his old district to a seat in the House. The 
summer was spent, as usual, at Roanoke. " I am dying," 
he said, " as decently as I can." 

In January, 1829, he wrote from Washington, " It won't 
do for a man, who wishes to indulge in dreams of human 
dignity and worth, to pass thirty years in public life. Al- 
though I do believe that we are the meanest people in the 
world — I speak of this 'court' and its retainers and fol- 
lowers. I am super-saturated with the world, as it calls 
itself, and have now but one object, which I shall keep 
steadily in view, and perhaps some turn of the dice may 
enable me to obtain it : it is to convert my property into 
money, which will enable me to live, or rather to die, 
where I please ; or rather where it may please God." 

The same year he retired from the public service, as he 
supposed, forever; but a Convention had been called to 
amend the Constitution of Virginia, and he was elected 
a member of it without consulting him. He watched the 
proceedings of that body with unremitting attention, and 
spoke to it upon important questions with quite his usual 
power. 

Before Mr. Randolph took his seat in the Convention 
he had been offered the mission to Russia by President 
Jackson. He was not, however, called upon to assume 
the duties of his mission till the May following. In June 
he set sail. In the autumn of the following year (1832) 
he returned to the United States, much reduced in health. 
His friends were shocked at his emaciated appearance. 



212 CHARACTERISTICS. 

Some misapprehension as to his conduct in St. Peters- 
burgh, caused him to make a speech in explanation. But 
his last energies were to be expended in a conflict more 
serious than any in which he had been engaged. The 
authority of the General Government and the rights of 
the States were fairly in antagonism. Congress had 
passed a new tariff law, and South Carolina had pro- 
claimed by ordinance that she would not obey it. Gen- 
eral Jackson proclaimed that the law should be obeyed. 
Randolph, the champion of State rights, justified South 
Carolina in her attitude of nullification. Although he 
had to be lifted into his carriage like an infant, he went 
from county to county, speaking to the people in his old 
tones with his accustomed fire. His only hope of salva- 
tion for the country was in his old antagonist, Henry 
Clay. " I know he has the power," he said, " I believe 
he will be found to have the patriotism and firmness equal 
to the occasion." 

On his way to Philadelphia, whence he expected to be 
able to embark for Europe, he visited the Senate Cham- 
ber, and took his seat in the rear of Mr. Clay, who 
happened to be on his feet addressing the Senate. " Raise 
me up!" said Randolph; "I want to hear that voice 
again." When Mr. Clay had concluded his remarks, 
which were very few, he turned round, to see from what 
quarter that singular voice proceeded. Seeing Mr. Ran- 
dolph, and that he was in a dying condition, he left his 
place and went to speak to him ; as he approached, Mr. 
Randolph said to the gentleman with him, "Raise me 
up ! " As Mr. Clay offered his hand, he said, " Mr. Ran- 
dolph, I hope you are better, sir." " No, sir," replied 
Randolph, " I am a dying man, and I came here expressly 
to have this interview with you." 

He was indeed a dying man. He managed, however, 
to get to Philadelphia, where he soon died, at the City 
Hotel. Not long before his death he had been lying per- 



JOHN BROWN. 213 

fectly quiet, with his eyes closed. He suddenly roused 
up and exclaimed — " Remorse ! remorse ! " It was 
twice repeated — the last time at the top of his voice, 
with great agitation. He cried out — " Let me see the 
word. Get a dictionary. Let me see the word." "There 
is none in the room, sir." "Write it down, then — let 
me see the word." The doctor picked up one of his 
cards, "Randolph of Roanoke" — "Shall I write it on 
this card ? " " Yes, nothing more proper." The word 
remorse was then written in pencil. He took the card in 
a hurried manner, and fastened his eyes on it with great 
intensity. "Write it on the back," he exclaimed — it 
was so done and handed him again. He was extremely 
agitated — " Remorse ! you have no idea what it is ; you 
can form no idea of it whatever ; it has contributed to 
bring me to my present situation — but I have looked to 
the Lord Jesus Christ, and hope I have obtained pardon. 
Now let John take your pencil and draw a line under the 
word," which was accordingly done. " What am I to do 
with the card ? " inquired the doctor. " Put it in your, 
pocket — take care of it — when I am dead, look at it." 

In a few minutes — after a few hurried words relating 
to his will — John Randolph was no more. 

John Brown was born on the 9th day of May, 1800. 
His parents were poor, but eminently of good repute. 
The first of his ancestry on the paternal side that we 
have any account of came over on the Mayflower. His 
mother was a descendant of Peter Miles, an early emi- 
grant from Holland, a tailor by trade, who died in 1754, 
at the advanced age of eighty-eight. His father and 
grandfather, and his mother's father and grandfather, 
all served in the war of the Revolution. His grand- 
father died in a barn near New York, while in the ser- 
vice. This is the inscription on his grave-stone : " The 
memory of Captain John Brown, who died in the Revolu- 



214 CHARACTERISTICS. 

tionary army, at New York, September 3, 1776. He was 
of the fourth generation, in regular descent, from Peter 
Brown, one of the Pilgrim Fathers, who landed from the 
Mayflower at Plymouth, Massachusetts, December 22, 
1620." He left a widow and eleven children. It is be- 
lieved that she reared these children with singular taste 
and judgment, to habits of industry and principles of 
virtue, as all became leading citizens in the communities 
in which they resided. One of the sons became a judge 
in one of the courts of Ohio. One of the daughters gave 
to one of the most flourishing of New England's colleges 
a president for twenty years, in the person of her son. 
She is described as a woman of great energy and econ- 
omy — the economy being a needful virtue. She cooked 
" always just what the children needed, and no more, and 
they always ' licked their trenchers,' when they had done 
with knife and fork." 

John Brown lived at Torrington, Connecticut, his birth- 
place, until he was five years old, when he emigrated with 
his father to Hudson, Ohio. The latter soon became 
one of the principal pioneer settlers of the new town ; 
was ever respected for his probity and honor j was com- 
monly called 'Squire Brown, and was one of the Board 
of Trustees of Oberlin College ; was endowed with en- 
ergy and enterprise, and went down to his grave honored 
and respected, about the year 1852, at the ripe age of 
eighty-seven. He was an earnestly devout and religious 
man, of the old Connecticut fashion. He was an invet- 
erate and most painful stammerer — " the first specimen 
of that infirmity that I had seen," says an early friend of 
the Brown family, " and, according to my recollection, the 
worst that I have ever known to this day; and I have 
never seen a man struggling and half strangled with a 
word stuck in his throat, without remembering good Mr. 
Owen Brown, who could not speak without stammering — 
except in prayer." 



JOHN BROWN. 215 

When John was four years old, he tells us himself, in 
the little sketch he made for the amusement of a child, 
that " he was tempted by three large brass pins belonging 
to a girl in the family, and stole them. In this he was 
detected by his mother, and, after having a full day to 
think of the wrong, received from her a thorough whip- 
ping." He preferred, he says, remaining at home to work 
hard, rather than to go to school. In warm weather, he 
says, he " might generally be seen barefooted and bare- 
headed, with buckskin breeches, suspended with one 
leather strap over his shoulder, but sometimes with two." 
He delighted to be sent great distances through the wil- 
derness alone. Sometimes he was sent a hundred miles, 
all alone, in charge of herds of cattle. He says he 
" would have thought his character much injured had he 
been obliged to be helped in such a job." This life in 
the woods gave him the habits and the keen senses of a 
hunter or an Indian. He told a friend that he became 
remarkably clear-sighted and quick of ear, and that he 
had smelled the frying of doughnuts, when he was very 
hungry, at five miles distance. He knew all the devices 
of woodcraft ; declared he could make a dinner for forty 
men out of the hide of one ox, and thought he understood 
how to provide for an army's subsistence. During the 
war with England, his father furnished the troops with 
beef cattle, the collecting and driving of which afforded 
John opportunity, which he enjoyed, of chasing the wild 
cattle, when they broke away, panic-stricken, through the 
unbroken forest. 

At the age of ten years, an old friend induced him to 
read a little history, and offered him the free use of his 
library ; in that way he acquired some taste for reading, 
which formed, he says, the principal part of his early edu- 
cation. He became very fond of the company and con- 
versation of old and intelligent persons. " He learned 
nothing of grammar, nor of composition ; nor did he get 



2l6 CHARACTERISTICS. 

at school so much knowledge of common arithmetic as 
the four ground rules. This will give the reader some 
general idea of the first fifteen years of his life ; dur- 
ing which time he became very strong and large of his 
age, and ambitious to perform the full labor of a man, 
at almost any kind of hard work. By reading the lives 
of great, wise, and good men — their sayings and writ- 
ings — he grew to a dislike of vain and frivolous con- 
versation and persons ; and was often greatly obliged by 
the kind manner in which older and more intelligent per- 
sons treated him at their homes." He joined the Con- 
gregational Church at the age of sixteen, with which, and 
the Presbyterian Church, he was connected till the day of 
his death. 

The years from fifteen to twenty were mostly spent in 
acquiring the trade of a tanner and currier — a part of 
the time acting in the capacity of foreman. His atten- 
tion to business, and success in its management, made 
him a favorite with older and graver persons. From the 
age of fifteen he felt a great anxiety to study • but an in- 
flammation of the eyes prevented close application. He 
managed, however, to become pretty well acquainted with 
arithmetic and surveying, which latter he practiced more 
or less for the rest of his life. At nineteen or twenty, he 
left Ohio and went East, to acquire a liberal education. 
His ultimate design, it is stated, was the ministry. At 
Plainneld, Massachusetts, he was fitted or nearly fitted 
for college. A brother of his teacher thus describes John 
Brown as he appeared at that time : " He was a tall, se- 
date, dignified young man. He had been a tanner, and 
relinquished a prosperous business for the purpose of in- 
tellectual improvement, but with what ultimate end I do 
not now know. He brought with him a piece of sole- 
leather, about a foot square, which he himself had tanned 
for seven years, to resole his boots. He had also a piece 
of sheep-skin which he had tanned, and of which he cut 



JOHN BROWN. 217 

some strips about an eighth of an inch wide for other 
students to pull upon. My father took one string, and, 
winding it around his fingers, said, ' I shall snap it.' The 
very marked, yet kind unmovableness of the young man's 
face on seeing my father's defeat — my father's own look, 
and the position of the people and things in the old 
kitchen — somehow gave me a fixed recollection of the 
little incident." While pursuing his studies, he was again 
attacked with inflammation of the eyes, and he returned 
to Ohio. " God," says his admiring biographer, " had 
higher work for this sedate, dignified young man than to 
write and deliver sermons to a parish. He was raising 
him up as a deliverer of captives and a teacher of right- 
eousness to a nation ; as the conserver of the light of 
true Christianity, when it was threatened with extinction, 
under the rubbish of creeds and constitutions, and iniq- 
uities enacted into laws." 

When he was just entering upon his twenty-first year 
he was married. He describes his young wife as remark- 
ably plain ; neat, industrious, and economical ; of excel- 
lent character ; earnest piety ; good practical common 
sense ; and about one year younger than himself. This 
woman, he says, by her mild, frank, and, more than all 
else, very consistent conduct, acquired and maintained 
while she lived a powerful and good influence over him. 
Her plain but kindly admonitions generally had the right 
effect, without arousing his haughty, obstinate temper. 
Her name was Dianthe Lusk, by whom he had seven 
children. Some time after her death, he married Mary 
A. Day, by whom he had thirteen children — twenty in 
all. 

From his twenty-first to his twenty-sixth year, John 
Brown was engaged in the tanning business, and as a 
farmer in Ohio. In 1826 he went to Pennsylvania, where 
he carried on the tanning business for nine years. One 
of his apprentices at this period informed his biographer 



2l8 CHARACTERISTICS. 

that he was characterized by singular probity of life, and 
by his strong and " eccentric " benevolent impulses. He 
refused to sell leather until the last drop of moisture had 
been dried from it, "lest he should sell his customer water, 
and reap the gain." He is said to have caused a man to 
be arrested, or rearrested, for some small offense, simply 
because he thought the crime should be punished ; and 
his benevolence induced him to supply the wants of the 
offender out of his private means, and to provide for the 
family until the trial. 

He returned to Ohio in 1835, where he again engaged 
in tanning, and trading in real estate. The latter turned 
out to be unfortunate. He then took a drove of cattle to 
Connecticut, and returned with a flock of sheep, — his 
first purchases in that business, in which afterward he 
became pretty largely interested. In 1840 he went to 
Hudson again, and engaged in the wool business. His 
partner there says of him : " From boyhood I have 
known him through manhood ; and through life he has 
been distinguished for his truthfulness and integrity ; he 
has ever been esteemed, by those who have known him, 
as a very conscientious man." 

It was, we are told, in 1839 that he conceived the idea 
of becoming a liberator of the Southern slaves. He had 
been an abolitionist since he was twelve years old, but 
now he determined to devote his life, as far as possible, to 
the cause of liberty against slavery, and to the rescue of 
slaves. His devotion to the cause was intensely earnest 
and heroic. " He had elements of character," said one 
who knew him well, " which, under circumstances favora- 
ble to their proper development and right direction, would 
have made him one of the greatest men of the world. 
Napoleon himself had no more blind and trusting confi- 
dence in his own destiny and resources ; his iron will and 
unbending purpose were equal to that of any man, living 
or dead ; his religious enthusiasm and sense of duty were 



JOHN BROWN. 219 

earnest and sincere, and not excelled by that of Oliver 
Cromwell or any of his followers ; while no danger could 
for a moment alarm or disturb him. His manner, though 
conveying the idea of a stern and self-sustaining man, was 
yet gentle and courteous, and marked by frequent and 
decided manifestations of kindness ; and it can probably 
be said of him, with truth, that, amid all his provocations, 
he never perpetrated an act of wanton or unnecessary 
cruelty. He was scrupulously honest, moral, and tem- 
perate, and never gave utterance to a boast." 

He was a very early riser, and a very hard worker. 
His dress is described as extremely plain ; never in the 
fashion, and never made of fine cloth. But he was 
always scrupulously clean and tidy in his personal appear- 
ance. "When first I saw him," says Redpath, "at his 
camp in Kansas, although his clothing was patched and 
old, and he was almost barefooted, he was as tidy, both in 
person and dress, as any gentleman of Boston." 

He was extremely fond of music. " I once saw him," 
said a friend, " sit listening with the most rapt attention 
to Schubert's Serenade, played by a mutual acquaintance, 
and, when the music ceased, tears were in the old man's 
eyes. He was indeed most tender-hearted — fond of 
children and pet creatures, and always enlisted on the 
weaker side. The last time I saw him in Boston, he had 
been greatly annoyed by overhearing in the street some 
rude language addressed to a black girl, who, he said, 
would never have been insulted if she had been white." 

" John Brown was always very agreeable," said Judge 
Russell, of Boston, in a recent address. " He used to 
hold up my little girl, eighteen months old, and say: 
'Now, when I am hung for treason, you can say that you 
used to stand on old Captain Brown's hand.' He walked 
the floor at night with his hands behind him, and occa- 
sionally brought out an idea. One I remember very dis- 
tinctly : ' It would be better that a whole generation 



220 CHARACTERISTICS. 

should perish from the earth, than that one truth in the 
Sermon on the Mount or the Declaration of Independ- 
ence should be forgotten among men.' " 

He went to Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1846, and 
engaged again in the wool business. His book-keeper 
describes him as a quiet and peaceable citizen, whose in- 
tegrity was never doubted ; honorable in all his dealings, 
but peculiar in many of his notions, and adhering to them 
with great obstinacy. He and his eldest son discussed 
slavery by the hour in the counting-room ; he said it was 
right for slaves to kill their masters and escape, and 
thought slaveholders were guilty of a very great wicked- 
ness. While at Springfield he went to Europe to look 
after his wool interests. He interested himself in agri- 
culture, but particularly in the armies of Great Britain 
and the Continent. He visited several of the battle fields 
of Napoleon : he thought him wrong in several points of 
strategy, particularly in his choice of ground for a strong 
position; which Brown maintained should be a ravine 
rather than a hill-top. He said that a ravine could be 
held by a few men against a larger force ; that he had 
acted on this principle in Kansas, and never suffered 
from it. He ascribed his winning the battle of Black 
Jack to his choice of ground. 

In 1849, he removed his family to North Elba, in Essex 
County, New York. It was at about this time, as stated 
by his biographer, that Gerritt Smith offered to colored 
settlers his wild lands in that district of the Adirondack 
wilderness. Many of them accepted the offer, and went 
there to make the experiment. At this period, it is re- 
lated, John Brown appeared one day at Peterboro', and 
said to Mr. Smith, " I see, by the newspapers, that you 
have offered so many acres of wild land to each of the 
colored men, on condition that they cultivate them. Now, 
,they are mostly inexperienced in this kind of work, and 
unused to the climate, while I am familiar with both. I 



JOHN BROWN. 221 

propose, therefore, to take a farm there myself, clear it 
and plant it, showing the negroes how such work should 
be done. I will also employ some of them on my land, 
and will look after them in all ways, and will be a kind of 
father to them." Mr. Smith accepted the humane pro- 
posal, gave John Brown the land, and allowed him to make 
the experiment, although he had never before seen him. 
So far as the negroes were concerned, this proved a fail- 
ure, but, it is believed, through no fault of Brown's. He 
did his part faithfully by them. He had, it is known, 
a higher notion of the capacity of the negro race than 
most white men. He was often heard to dwell on this 
subject, and mention instances of their fitness to take care 
of themselves. He thought that "perhaps a forcible sep- 
aration of the connection between master and slave was 
necessary to educate the blacks for self-government;" 
but this he threw out as a suggestion merely. 

The John Brown farm is described as a wild place ; 
cold and bleak. It is too cold to raise corn there ; they 
can scarcely, in the most favorable seasons, obtain a few 
ears for roasting. Stock must be wintered for almost 
six months in the year. I was there, says Higginson, on 
the first day of November ; the ground was snowy, and 
winter had apparently begun — and it would last until the 
middle of May. They never raised any thing to sell off 
the farm, except sometimes a few fleeces. It was well, 
the family said, if they raised their own provisions, and 
could spin their own wool for clothing. k 'I was the 
first person," said Higginson, "who had penetrated their 
solitude from the outer world since the thunderbolt had 
fallen. Do not imagine that they asked, What is the world 
saying of us ? Will justice be done to the memory of our 
martyrs ? Will men build the tombs of the prophets ? 
Will the great thinkers of the age affirm that our father 
' makes the gallows glorious, like the cross ' ? Not at 
all ; they asked but one question after I had told them 



222 CHARACTERISTICS. 

how little hope there was of acquittal or rescue. Does it 
seem as if freedom were to gain or lose by this ? That 
was all. Their mother spoke the spirit of them all to 
me, next day, when she said, ' I have had thirteen chil- 
dren, and only four are left ; but if I am to see the ruin 
of my house, I cannot but hope that Providence may 
bring out of it some benefit to the poor slaves.' " " Peo- 
ple are surprised," said Annie Brown, "at father's daring 
to invade Virginia with only twenty-three men ; but I 
think if they knew what sort of men they were, there 
would be less surprise. I never saw such men." 

In 1854, four sons of John Brown determined to re- 
move to Kansas. In the summer of 1855, in a county 
adjoining Essex, in New York, a meeting of abolitionists 
was held. John Brown appeared in that convention, and 
made a very fiery speech, in which he said he had four 
sons in Kansas, and had three others who were desirous 
of going there, to aid in fighting the battles of freedom. 
He could not consent to go unless he could go armed, 
and he would like to arm all his sons ; but his poverty 
prevented him from doing so. He stated that he had only 
two objects in going to Kansas : first, to begin the work for 
which, as he believed, he had been set apart, by so acting 
as to acquire the confidence of the friends of freedom, 
who might thereby subsequently aid him ; and, secondly, 
because, to use his own language, "with the exposure, 
privations, hardships, and wants of pioneer life, he was 
familiar, and thought he could benefit his children, and 
the new beginners from the older parts of the country, 
and help them to shift and contrive in their new home." 

The first that we hear of him there was in a caucus 
at Ossawattomie. A resolution had been offered that 
aroused the old man's anger. It declared that Kansas 
should be a free white State, thereby favoring the exclu- 
sion of negroes and mulattoes, whether slave or free. He 
rose to speak, and, it is stated, soon alarmed and dis- 



JOHN BROWN. 223 

gusted the politicians present by asserting the manhood 
of the negro race, and expressing his earnest, anti-slavery 
convictions with great force and vehemence. 

In camp, it is further stated, he permitted no manner 
of profane language ; no man of immoral character was 
allowed to stay, excepting as a prisoner of war. He made 
prayers in which all the company united, every morning 
and evening ; and no food was ever tasted by his men 
until the divine blessing had been asked on it It is said 
also that he would retire into the densest solitudes for 
secret prayer. One of his company said that after these 
retirings he would say that the Lord had directed him in 
visions what to do ; that, for himself, he did not love war- 
fare, but peace, — only acting in obedience to the will of 
the Lord, and fighting God's battles for His children's 
sake. 

At the battles of Black Jack and Ossawattomie his rep- 
utation as a guerrilla commander was established. At 
Black Jack, with a squad of only a few men, after a three 
hours' fight, he succeeded in killing, scattering, and cap- 
turing a superior force. Only two of the Free State men 
were wounded — one of them a son-in-law of the com- 
mander. At Ossawattomie, with a force of not more than 
thirty men, against a formidable enemy — nearly five hun- 
dred it is stated — he came out of the conflict with one 
dead, two wounded, and two missing, while the loss of 
the other side was " thirty-one or two killed, and from 
forty to fifty wounded." The old man, we are informed, 
stood near a sapling during the whole of the engagement, 
quietly giving directions to his men, and " annoying the 
enemy " with his own steady rifle, indifferent to the grape 
shots and balls which whizzed around him, and hewed 
clown the limbs, scattered the foliage, and peeled off the 
bark from the trees on every side. 

His conduct at the defense of Lawrence was charac- 
terized by the same courage and ability. Mounting a 



224 CHARACTERISTICS. 

dry-goods box in the main street, he addressed the ex- 
cited citizens as follows : "Gentlemen, it is said there are 
twenty-five hundred Missourians down at Franklin, and 
that they will be here in two hours. You can see for 
yourselves the smoke they are making by setting fire to 
the houses in that town. Now this is probably the last 
opportunity you will have of seeing a fight ; so that you 
had better do your best. If they should come up and 
attack us, don't yell and make a noise, but remain per- 
fectly silent and still. Wait till they get within twenty- 
five yards of you ; get a good object ; be sure you see 
the hind sight of your gun : then fire. A great deal of 
powder and lead, and very precious time, are wasted by 
shooting too high. You had better aim at their legs than 
at their heads. In either case, be sure of the hind sights 
of your guns. It is from this reason that I myself have 
so many times escaped ; for, if all the bullets which have 
ever been aimed at me had hit me, I should have been as 
full of holes as a riddle." 

After the retreat from Franklin, Brown and his four 
sons left Lawrence for the East. Encountering a fugitive 
slave at Topeka, they covered him up in their wagon, and 
carried him along with them. We hear of him in Iowa, 
in Cleveland, then in Boston — in January, 1857 — where 
he made a speech, recounting his experiences and views, 
to the Massachusetts legislature. As to his appearance 
at that time, an acquaintance said : " His brown coat of 
the fashion of ten years before, his waistcoat buttoning 
nearly to the throat, and his wide trowsers, gave him the 
look of a well-to-do farmer in his Sunday dress ; while 
his patent leather stock, gray surtout, and fur cap, added 
a military air to his figure. At this time he wore no 
beard." The next we hear of him is at New York, at the 
Metropolitan Hotel, on his way to Philadelphia and Wash- 
ington. He objected to the show and extravagance of 
such an establishment as the Metropolitan, and said he 



JOHN BROWN. 225 

preferred a plain tavern, where drovers and farmers 
lodged in a plain way. Next he is at his home at North 
Elba. In February, in Collinsville, Connecticut, he con- 
tracted for the manufacture of his pikes. Every thing he 
did now bore as directly as possible upon the final result, 
so rapidly approaching. He visited Kansas again, and 
Iowa, and Canada, where he conveyed some fugitive 
slaves. Here the conspiracy against Harper's Ferry was 
organized, but the attack was not made until the night of 
the 17th day of October, 1859. The night before the at- 
tack, he said to his men : " Let me press this one thing 
on your minds. You all know how dear life is to you, 
and how dear your lives are to your friends ; and, in re- 
membering that, consider that the lives of others are as 
dear to them as yours are to you. Do not, therefore, 
take the life of any one if you can possibly avoid it ; but 
if it is necessary to take life, in order to save your own, 
then make sure work of it." 

The Governor of the State of Virginia visited him in 
prison, after his capture, and said of him : " They them- 
selves are mistaken who take him to be a madman. He 
is a bundle of the best nerves I ever saw, cut, and thrust, 
and bleeding, and in bonds. He is a man of clear head, 
of courage, fortitude, and simple ingenuousness. He is 
cool, collected, and indomitable. The gamest man I ever 
saw." 

On the scaffold, at midday, under the shining sun, on 
the second day of December, in the year of our Lord one 
thousand eight hundred and fifty-nine, he died. 

# John Brown, when he was twelve years old, on seeing 
a negro slave of his own age cruelly beaten, began to 
hate slavery and love the slaves so intensely that he some- 
times asked himself the question, Is God their Father ? 
At {prty, he conceived the idea of becoming a liberator of 
the Southern slaves ; at the same time he determined to 
* Library Notes. 
J 5 



226 CHARACTERISTICS. 

let them know that they had friends, and prepared him- 
self to lead them to liberty. From the moment that he 
formed this resolution, he engaged in no business which 
he could not, without loss to his friends and family, wind 
up in fourteen days. His favorite texts of Scripture 
were, "Remember them that are in bonds, as bound 
with them ; " " Whoso stoppeth his ear at the cry of the 
poor, he also shall cry himself, but shall not be heard;" 
" Whoso mocketh the poor reproacheth his Maker, and 
he that is glad at calamities shall not be unpunished ; " 
" Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when 
it is in the power of thine hand to do it." His favorite 
hymns were, " Blow ye the trumpet, blow ! " and " Why 
should we start and fear to die ? " A child asked him 
how he felt when he left the eleven slaves, which he had 
taken from Missouri to Canada ? His answer was, 
" Lord, permit now thy servant to die in peace, for mine 
eyes have seen thy salvation. I could not brook the 
idea that any ill should befall them, or they be taken back 
to slavery. The arm of Jehovah protected us." Upon 
one occasion, when one of the ex-governors of Kansas 
said to him that he was a marked man, and that the Mis- 
sourians were determined, sooner or later, to take his 
scalp, the old man straightened himself up, with a glance 
of enthusiasm and defiance in his gray eye : " Sir," said 
he, " the Angel of the Lord will camp round about me." 
On leaving his family the first time he went to Kansas, he 
said, "If it is so painful for us to part, with the hope of 
meeting again, how dreadful must be the separation for 
life of hundreds of poor slaves." He deliberately deter- 
mined, we are ■ assured, twenty years before his attack 
upon Harper's Ferry, that at some future period he would 
organize an armed party, go into a slave State, and liber- 
ate a large number of slaves. Soon after, surveying pro- 
fessionally in the mountains of Virginia, he chose the 
very ground for the purpose. He said, " God had estab- 



JOHN BROWN. 227 

lished the Alleghany Mountains from the foundation of 
the world that they might one day be a refuge for fugitive 
slaves." Visiting Europe afterward, he studied military 
strategy, and made designs for a new style of forest forti- 
fications, simple and ingenious, to be used by parties of 
fugitive slaves when brought to bay. He knew the 
ground, he knew his plans, he knew himself ; but where 
should he find his men ? Such men as he needed are 
not to be found ordinarily • they must be reared. John 
Brown did not merely look for men, therefore ; he reared 
them in his sons. Mrs. Brown had been always the 
sharer of his plans. " Her husband always believed," she 
said, "that he was to be an instrument in the hands of 
Providence, and she believed it too. This plan had occu- 
pied his thoughts and prayers for twenty years. Many a 
night he had lain awake and prayed concerning it." He 
believed in human brotherhood, and in the God of battles ; 
he admired, he said, Nat Turner, the negro patriot, equally 
w r ith George Washington, the white American deliverer. 
He secretly despised even the ablest of the anti-slavery 
orators. He could see " no use in this talking," he said. 
"Talk is a national institution ; but it does no manner of 
good to the slaves." The year before his attack upon 
Harper's Ferry, he uttered these sentences in conversa- 
tion : " Nat Turner, with fifty men, held Virginia five 
weeks. The same number, well organized and armed, 
can shake the system out of the State." " Give a slave a 
pike, and you make him a man. Deprive him of the 
means of resistance, and you keep him down." " The 
land belongs to the bondsman. He has enriched it, and 
been robbed of its fruits."- " Any resistance, however 
bloody, is better than the system which makes every sev- 
enth woman a concubine." " A few men in the right, and 
knowing they are, can overturn a king. Twenty men in 
the Alleghanies could break slavery to pieces in two 
years." " When the bondsmen stand like men, the nation 



228 CHARACTERISTICS. 

will respect them. It is necessary to teach them this." 
About the same time he said, in another conversation, 
that " it was nothing to die in a good cause, but an eter- 
nal disgrace to sit still in the presence of the barbarities 
of American slavery." " Providence," said he, " has 
made me an actor, and slavery an outlaw." " Duty is the 
voice of God, and a man is neither worthy of a good 
home here, or a heaven, that is not willing to be in peril 
for a good cause." He scouted the idea of rest while he 
held "a commission direct from God Almighty to act 
against slavery." After his capture, and while he lay in 
blood upon the floor of the guard-house, he was asked by 
a bystander upon what principle he justified his acts? 
" Upon the Golden Rule," he answered. " I pity the 
poor in bondage that have none to help them. That is 
why I am here ; it is not to gratify any personal animos- 
ity, or feeling of revenge, or vindictive spirit. It is my 
sympathy with the oppressed and the wronged, that are 
as good as you, and as precious in the sight of God. I 
want you to understand, gentlemen, that I respect the 
rights of the poorest and weakest of the colored people, 
oppressed by the slave system, just as much as I do those 
of the most wealthy and powerful. That is the idea that 
has moved me, and that alone. We expected no reward 
except the satisfaction of endeavoring to do for those in 
distress — the greatly oppressed — as we would be done 
by. The cry of distress, of the oppressed, is my reason, 
and the only thing that prompted me to come here. I 
wish to say, furthermore, that you had better, all you 
people of the South, prepare yourselves for a settlement 
of this question. It must come up for settlement sooner 
than you are prepared for it, and the sooner you com- 
mence that preparation, the better for you. You may 
dispose of me very easily. I am nearly disposed of now ; 
but this question is still to be settled — this negro ques- 
tion, I mean. The end of that is not yet." In his " last 



JOHN BROWN. 229 

speech," before sentence of death was passed upon him, 
he said, " This court acknowledges, as I suppose, the 
validity of the law of God. I see a book kissed here 
which I suppose to be the Bible, or, at least, the New 
Testament. That teaches me that all things 'whatsoever 
I would that men should do unto me I should do even so 
to them.' It teaches me further to ' remember them that 
are in bonds, as bound with them.' I endeavored to act 
up to that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to un- 
derstand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe 
that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always 
freely admitted I have done, in behalf of his despised 
poor, was not wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed 
necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance 
of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with 
the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions 
in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by 
wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments — I submit : so let 
it be done." In a postscript to a letter to a half-brother, 
written in prison, he said, " Say to my poor boys never 
to grieve for one moment on my account ; and should any 
of you live to see the time when you will not blush to own 
your relation to old John Brown, it will not be more 
strange than many things that have happened." In a 
letter to his old schoolmaster, he said, " I have enjoyed 
much of life, as I was enabled to discover the secret of 
this somewhat early. It has been in making the pros- 
perity and happiness of others my own ; so that really I 
have had a great deal of prosperity." To another he 
wrote, " I commend my poor family to the kind remem- 
brance of all friends, but I well understand that they are 
not the only poor in our world. I ought to begin to leave 
off saying our world." In his last letter to his family, he 
said, " I am waiting the hour of my public murder with 
great composure of mind and cheerfulness, feeling the 
strong assurance that in no other possible way could I be 



23O CHARACTERISTICS. 

used to so much advantage to the cause of God and of 
humanity, and that nothing that I or all my family have 
sacrificed or suffered will be lost Do not feel ashamed 
on my account, nor for one moment despair of the cause, 
or grow weary of well-doing. I bless God I never felt 
stronger confidence in the certain and near approach of 
a bright morning and glorious day than I have felt, and 
do now feel, since my confinement here." In a previous 
letter to his family, he said, " Never forget the poor, nor 
think any thing you bestow on them to be lost to you, 
even though they may be as black as Ebed-melech, the 
Ethiopian eunuch, who cared for Jeremiah in the pit of 
the dungeon, or as black as the one to whom Philip 
preached Christ. ' Remember them that are in bonds, as 
bound with them.' " As he stepped out of the jail-door, 
on his way to the gallows, " a black woman, with a little 
child in her arms, stood near his way. The twain were of 
the despised race for whose emancipation and elevation 
to the dignity of the children of God he was about to lay 
down his life. His thoughts at that moment none can 
know except as his acts interpret them. He stopped for 
a moment in his course, stooped over, and with the ten- 
derness of one whose love is as broad as the brotherhood 
of man, kissed the child affectionately. As he came upon 
an eminence near the gallows, he cast his eye over the 
beautiful landscape, and followed the windings of the 
Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance. He looked up 
earnestly at the sun, and sky, and all about, and then 
remarked, ' This is a beautiful country. I have not cast 
my eyes over it before.' " " You are more cheerful than I 
am, Captain Brown," said the undertaker, who sat with 
him in the wagon. " Yes," answered the old man, " I 
ought to be." " ' Gentlemen, good-by,' he said to two ac- 
quaintances, as he passed from the wagon to the scaffold, 
which he was first to mount. As he quietly awaited the 
necessary arrangements, he surveyed the scenery un- 



JOHN RANDOLPH AND JOHN BROWN. 23 1 

moved, looking principally in the direction of the people, 
in the far distance. ' There is no faltering in his steps,' 
wrote one who saw him, ' but firmly and erect he stands 
amid the almost breathless lines of soldiery that surround 
him. With a graceful motion of his pinioned right arm 
he takes the slouched hat from his head and carelessly 
casts it upon the platform by his side. His elbows and 
ankles are pinioned, the white cap is drawn over his eyes, 
the hangman's rope is adjusted around his neck. ' Cap- 
tain Brown,' said the sheriff, ' you are not standing on the 
drop. Will you come forward ? ' * I can't see you, gen- 
tlemen,' was the old man's answer, unfalteringly spoken ; 
1 you must lead me.' The sheriff led his prisoner forward 
to the centre of the drop. ' Shall I give you a handker- 
chief,' he then asked, ' and let you drop it as a signal ? ' 
1 No ; I am ready at any time ; but do not keep me need- 
lessly waiting.' " 

John Randolph and John Brown ! Remarkable men ! 
and peculiarly interesting, as characters and types, to all 
Americans. What contrasts ! The first, an aristocrat — 
born, as we have seen, in a mansion-house, not unworthy 
of the baronial days in which it was built ; the inheritor 
of an honored name and of vast estates ; proud of his 
cavalier descent, and proud of his princely possessions ; 
surrounded, from his birth, with an atmosphere of refine- 
ment and intelligence ; with every accessory and auxil- 
iary, it would appear, to make him supremely happy ; 
with every body to do for him, and every thing to do with ; 
" thin-skinned, sensitive, impulsive, and imaginative," but 
with an accomplished and tender mother to soothe him, 
and a quiet closet to resort to, stored with the wisdom of 
all ages ; flattered, caressed, and petted ; in his youth at 
the capital, enjoying daily intercourse with statesmen and 
men of learning • in his early manhood elected to Con- 
gress, and kept there, nearly the remainder of his life, by 



232 CHARACTERISTICS. 

an admiring and generous constituency ; a student of the 
Constitution with the makers of it ; a traveler abroad, 
with every advantage of society, study, and observation ; 
commanding, as a man and as a statesman; distressed, 
after all, in body and in mind, and going to his grave re- 
morseful, and despairing of his country. The second, 
a democrat, the product of poverty and hope ; of a long 
line of indigence, industry, and honesty ; knowing life at 
its hardest, from the beginning ; dressing in skins, like a 
savage ; stealing a pin, and getting a whipping for it ; 
loving the wilderness, for its immensity and loneliness, 
and driving wild cattle through it for a hundred miles ; 
growing up illiterate, but intelligent ; a tanner, and learn- 
ing how to make a dinner for forty men out of the hide 
of an ox; married at twenty, and the father of twenty 
children — all Browns — every inch ; on his feet, strug- 
gling abreast with poor men, remembering those that are 
in bonds, as bound with them ; inspired, twenty years be- 
fore his death, with the idea of becoming a liberator of 
slaves ; from that moment bending every effort of his life 
to that end ; visiting Europe on business, and studying 
military strategy ; encouraging emigration, and protect- 
ing the immigrants ; fighting slavery, and rescuing slaves ; 
on the border, with a reward offered for his head ; in 
Boston, with an officer after him with a warrant ; shunned 
and forsworn by multitudes of sympathizers ; by slavery 
made an outlaw, and by Providence an actor; avoided, 
suspected, and hunted, but vindictive never ; scouting the 
idea of rest, holding, as he believed, a commission direct 
from Almighty God ; cheerful and composed in the teeth 
of need and of vengeance ; never querulous or complain- 
ing, even when in prison and in chains ; but serenely 
going to his death, with still a conscience toward God. 
Both were honest men, to the core. Both were brave, to 
a fault. Each was the peer of any, and a natural ruler 
over many. Each was true to what he believed to be his 



JOHN RANDOLPH AND JOHN BROWN. 233 

mission. One was a born hater of caste, and a staunch 
believer in the equality of all men, without distinction ; 
the other a born believer in radical differences of blood 
and race, — declaring, as we have seen, that "no two 
distinct people could occupy the same territory, under 
one government, but in the relation of master and vassal." 
One gave the efforts of his life to his idea; the other 
gave all his efforts, and his life too, to his. One went 
discouraged to his grave., with remorse lingering on his 
tongue and preying at his heart ; the other serenely riding 
to the scaffold, smiling with the sun and the morning, and 
confidently hoping for a better day. 



IX. 
THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 

Was ever wit more audacious than Foote ? Perspica- 
cious and bold — seeing every thing and stopping at 
nothing, — no wonder the great town shook with terror 
and laughter at his daring personalities and mimicries. 
As quick to say as to see, the strokes of his humor were 
as surprising as they were instantaneous, and his victims 
fell without staggering. There was no threatening, to 
forewarn or alarm ; no noisy brewing of elements ; no 
waste by elaboration • and when the mischief was done, 
there was no smell of spent forces. On the stage, at the 
club, at the coffee-house, he took off every body of prom- 
inence or eminence. Nobody seemed to escape him. At 
the Haymarket, for forty nights in succession, he imitated 
Whitefield. " There is hardly a public man in England," 
said Davies, "who has not entered Mr. Foote's theatre 
with an aching heart, under the apprehension of seeing 
himself laughed at." His rule was, that you ought not 
to run the chance of losing your friend for your joke 
unless your joke happens to be better than your friend. 
Imagine how the sensitive Goldsmith must have shrunk 
from his aggressive wit, and insolent, impudent, swagger- 
ing animal spirits. Johnson alone, of all that were about 
him, seemed able to keep the brilliant, audacious outlaw 
within bounds. The great moralist was but too conscious 
of his peculiarities and deformities, and if Foote had 
dared to mimic them publicly he would have broken his 
bones. 

" Foote," said Johnson, " is the most incompressible 



THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 235 

fellow that I ever saw : when you have driven him into a 
corner, and think you are sure of him, he runs through 
between your legs, or jumps over your head, and makes 
his escape. Then he has a great range for wit ; he never 
lets truth stand between him and a jest, and he is some- 
times mighty coarse. . . . The first time I was in com- 
pany with Foote, was at Fitzherbert's. Having no good 
opinion of the fellow, I was resolved not to be pleased ; 
and it is very difficult to please a man against his will. 
I went on eating my dinner pretty sullenly, affecting not 
to mind him. But the dog was so very comical that I 
was obliged to lay down my knife and fork, throw myself 
back upon my chair, and fairly laugh it out. No, sir, he 
was irresistible. He upon one occasion experienced, in 
an extraordinary degree, the efficacy of his powers of en- 
tertaining. Amongst the many and various modes which 
he tried of getting money, he became a partner with a 
small-beer brewer, and he was to have a share of the 
profits for procuring customers amongst his numerous ac- 
quaintance. Fitzherbert was one who took his small- 
beer ; but it was so bad that the servants resolved not to 
drink it. They were at some loss how to notify their 
resolution, being afraid of offending their master, who 
they knew liked Foote much as a companion. At last 
they fixed upon a little black boy, who was rather a favor- 
ite, to be their deputy, and deliver their remonstrance ; 
and having invested him with the whole authority of the 
kitchen, he was to inform Mr. Fitzherbert, in all their 
names, upon a certain day, that they would drink Foote's 
small-beer no longer. On that day, Foote happened to 
dine at Fitzherbert's, and this boy served at table ; he 
was so delighted with Foote's stories, and merriment, and 
grimace, that when he went down stairs, he told them, 
'This is the finest man I have ever seen. I will not de- 
liver your message. I will drink his small-beer.' " 

Foote went to Ireland, and took off a celebrated Dub- 



236 CHARACTERISTICS. 

lin printer. The printer stood the jest for some time, but 
found at last that Foote's imitations became so popular, 
and drew such attention to himself, that he could not 
walk the streets without being pointed at. He bethought 
himself of a remedy. Collecting a number of boys, he 
gave them a hearty meal, and a shilling each for a place 
in the gallery, and promised them another meal on the 
morrow if they would hiss off the scoundrel who turned 
him into ridicule. The injured man learned from his 
friends that Foote was received that night better than 
ever. Nevertheless, in the morning, the ragged troop of 
boys appeared to demand their recompense, and when 
the printer reproached them for their treachery, their 
spokesman said : " Plase yer honor, we did all we could, 
for the actor man had heard of us, and did not come at 
all at all. And so we had nobody to hiss. But when we 
saw yer honor's own dear self come on, we did clap, in- 
deed we did, and showed you all the respect and honor 
in our power. And so yer honor won't forget us because 
yer honor's enemy was afraid to come, and left yer honor 
to yer own dear self." For this story we are indebted to 
Crabb Robinson, to whom Incledon, the singer, related 
it one day when they were traveling in a stage-coach to- 
gether — the garrulous fellow all the time rattling away 
about Garrick and Mrs. Siddons and every body — him- 
self especially. 

Qn one occasion, some one said to Johnson, " If Bet- 
terton and Foote were to walk into this room, you would 
respect Betterton much more than Foote." Johnson re- 
plied, "If Betterton were to walk into this room with 
Foote, Foote would soon drive him out of it. Foote, sir, 
has powers superior to them all." 

Successful mimicry is more generally pleasing than any 
other kind of amusement : it amuses every one but the 
victim of it. Mathews, the elder, when a boy, success- 
fully imitated the cry of a perambulating fishmonger, and 



THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 2tf 

was severely punished for it. " Next time," said the 
huge monster, as he felled the youthful comedian to the 
earth, " next time as you twists your little wry mouth 
about, and cuts your mugs at a respectable tradesman, 
I'll skin you like an e — e — "; and seizing his whole 
shop up in his Brobdingnagian arms, he finished the mon- 
osyllable not much less than a square away. "For 
weeks — nay months " — says Mathews — " did I suffer 
from the effects of this punishment." At a later period 
— soon after he made his appearance on the stage — his 
imitations of a fellow-actor — Lee Sugg — were punished 
even more severely. Sugg, it is stated, trusting not too 
implicitly to his own personal strength, which was very 
great, called in to his aid an auxiliary in the shape of an 
iron bar ; and thus doubly armed, he lay in wait one 
night in a dark corner for the young offender's approach, 
who, in passing, received a blow across his back, which, 
had it alighted on his head, would have cured him of all 
further attempts to take others off. He felt the effects 
of the ruffianly attack for a long while. Still later — at 
the very height of his reputation — he writes to his wife 
from Edinburgh : "I was placed in a most awkward situ- 
ation in the Courts of Law on Saturday. Erskine, while 
pleading, glanced his eye toward me, stopped, laughed, 
and shook his fist at me. This drew the eyes of about 
two hundred people upon me. I blushed up to the eyes. 
When he sat down, I observed he wrote a note with a 
pencil to the judge, Lord Gillies. He craned his neck 
directly to look at me, and when he came out of court, 
Erskine said, ' What the devil brings you here, mon, — 
you spoilt my speech, — I canna afford to be taken off. 
Did you observe Lord Gillies look at you ? I wrote him 
a caird, and told him to be on his guard, as I was, or we 
should both be upon the stage before supper to-night." 

Very early in life Foote's peculiar genius began to show 
itself. There is, it is related, a tradition remaining in the 



238 CHARACTERISTICS. 

school at Oxford that the boys often suffered on a Monday 
for preferring Sam's laughter to their lessons, for, when- 
ever he had dined on a Sunday with any of his relatives, 
his jokes and imitations next day at the expense of the 
family entertaining him had all the fascination of a stage- 
play. When brought before the provost, who is repre- 
sented as a pedant of the most uncompromising school, 
Foote would present himself to receive his reprimand 
with great apparent gravity and submission, but with a 
large dictionary under his arm ; when, on the doctor be- 
ginning in his usual pompous manner with a surprisingly 
long word, he would immediately interrupt him, and, 
after begging pardon with great formality, would produce 
his dictionary, and pretending to find the meaning of the 
word, would say, " Very well, sir ; now please to go on." 
His first essay as an author, Murphy tells us, was "a 
pamphlet, giving an account of one of his uncles who 
was executed for murdering his other uncle," for which 
he received ten pounds of an Old Bailey bookseller. 
Such was the extremity of his need at the time, that on 
the clay he sold his manuscript, he was, we are told by 
Cooke, actually obliged to wear his boots without stock- 
ings, and on his receiving his ten pounds he stopped at a 
hosier's in Fleet Street to remedy the defect ; but hardly 
had he issued from the shop when two old Oxford asso- 
ciates, arrived in London on a frolic, recognized him and 
bore him off to dinner at the Bedford ; where, as the glass 
began to circulate, the state of his wardrobe came within 
view, and he was asked what the deuce had become of 
his stockings? "Why," said Foote, unembarrassed, "I 
never wear any at this time of the year, till I am going 
to dress for the evening ; and you see," pulling his pur- 
chase out of his pocket, and silencing the laugh and the 
suspicion of his friends, "I am always provided with a 
pair for the occasion." 

Forster, in his delightful monograph of the English 



THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 239 

Aristophanes, as Foote was sometimes called, gives some 
anecdotes to show the remarkable readiness of his humor. 
He was talking away one evening, at the dinner-table of 
a man of rank, when, at the point of one of his best 
stories, one of the party interrupted him suddenly, with 
an air of most considerate apology, " I beg your pardon, 
Mr. Foote, but your handkerchief is half out of your 
pocket." "Thank you, sir," said Mr. Foote, replacing 
it ; "you know the company better than I do," and fin- 
ished his joke. At one of Macklin's absurd Lectures on 
the Ancients, the lecturer was solemnly composing him- 
self to begin, when a buzz of laughter from where Foote 
stood ran through the room, and Macklin, thinking to 
throw the laugher off his guard, and effectually for that 
night disarm his ridicule, turned to him with this ques- 
tion, in his most severe and pompous manner : " Well, 
sir, you seem to be very merry there ; but do you know 
what I am going to say, now ? " " No, sir," at once re- 
plied Foote ; "pray, do you ? " The then Duke of Cum- 
berland came one night into the green-room of the Hay- 
market Theatre. " Well, Foote," said he, " here I am, 
ready, as usual, to swallow all your good things." 
"Really," replied Foote, "your Royal Highness must 
have an excellent digestion, for you never bring any up 
again." " Why are you forever humming that air ? " he 
asked a man without a sense of tune in him. " Because 
it haunts me." " No wonder," said Foote ; " you are 
forever murdering it." One of Mrs. Montagu's blue- 
stocking ladies fastened upon him at one of the routs in 
Portman Square with her views of Locke on the Under- 
standing, which she protested she admired above all 
things j only there was one particular word very often 
repeated which she could not distinctly make out, and 
that was " the word (pronouncing it very long) ide-a ; 
but I suppose it comes from a Greek derivation." "You 
are perfectly right, madam," said Foote j "it comes from 



240 CHARACTERISTICS. 

the word ideaowski." "And pray, sir, what does that 
mean ? " " The feminine of idiot, madam." Much bored 
by a pompous physician of Bath, who confided to him as 
a great secret that he had a mind to publish his own 
poems, but had so many irons in the fire he really did 
not know what to do: "Take my advice, doctor," says 
Foote, " and put your poems where your irons are." Sel- 
wyn mentioned that Foote, having received much atten- 
tion from the Eton boys, in showing him about the college, 
collected them round him in the quadrangle, and said, 
" Now, young gentlemen, what can I do for you to show 
you how much I am obliged to you ? " " Tell us, Mr. 
Foote," -sa)^ the leader, "the best thing you ever said." 
" Why," says Foote, "seeing once a little blackguard imp 
of a chimney-sweeper mounted on a noble steed, prancing 
and curveting in all the pride and magnificence of na- 
ture, — ' There,' cried I, ' goes Warburton on Shakes- 
peare.' " " Pray, sir," asked a lady of fashion, referring 
to his play of the Puppet-show, " are your puppets to be 
as large as life ? " " Oh dear, madam, no," replied Foote ; 
" not much above the size of Garrick." A country farmer 
who had just buried a rich relation, an attorney, com- 
plained to him of the very great expense of a country 
funeral, in respect to carriages, scarfs, hat-bands, etc. 
" Why, do you bury your attorneys here ? " asked Foote. 
" Yes, to be sure we do : how else ? " " Oh ! we never 
do that in London." " No ! " said the other, much sur- 
prised ; " how do you manage ? " " Why, when the patient 
happens to die, we lay him out in a room over night by 
himself, lock the door, throw open the sash, and in the 
morning he is entirely off." " Indeed ! " said the other, 
in amazement : " what becomes of him ? " " Why, that 
we cannot exactly tell ; all we know is, there 's a strong 
smell of brimstone in the room the next morning." 

He was notorious as a spendthrift, having spent three 
handsome fortunes before he became noted as a player. 



THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 24 1 

The success of one of his comedies having recruited his 
finances, he made alterations both in his town and 
country house, enlarged his hospitalities, and laid out 
twelve hundred pounds in a magnificent service of plate. 
When he was reminded by some friends of these extrava- 
gances, and particularly the last, he turned it off by say- 
ing, he acted from a principle of economy ; for as he 
knew he could never keep his gold, he very prudently 
laid out his money in silver, which would not only last 
longer, but in the end sell for nearly as much as it orig- 
inally cost. 

One of his noble friends, a paymaster of the forces, 
having observed how grossly he was plundered at play, 
made so bold as to say to him, that from his careless 
manner of playing and betting, and his habit of telling 
stories when he should be minding his game, he must in 
the long run be ruined, let him play with whom he would. 
Foote resented this advice. He told his friend with sharp- 
ness, that although he was no politician by profession, 
he could see as soon as any into any sinister designs laid 
against him ; that he was too old to be schooled ; and 
that as to any distinction of rank between them to war- 
rant this liberty, he saw none ; they were both the king's 
servants, with this difference in his favor, — that he could 
always draw upon his talents for independence, when per- 
haps a courtier could not find the king's treasury always 
open to him for support. 

In his stage mimicries he was merciless on some of his 
fellow-actors. Even their infirmities were made the sub- 
ject of his ridicule. Delane had only one eye. He 
brought him on as a beggar-man in St. Paul's Churchyard : 
" Would you bestow your pity on a poor blind man ? " 
Ryan had met with an injury to the mouth, which gave 
his utterance a peculiar discordance. This infirmity was. 
also fair game ; and he was held up as a razor-grinder, — 
"Razors to grind, scissors to grind, pen-knives to grind!" 
16 



242 CHARACTERISTICS. 

Foote's " enmity," as Fitzgerald calls the feeling toward 
Garrick, had, in the judgment of the fore-mentioned par- 
tial biographer, the happy effect of showing the man he 
hated in a superior light. Foote, very short of money, 
had accepted a Scotch engagement. " But where 's the 
means ? " he said to Wilkinson. " D — n it, I must so- 
licit that hound, Garrick." He did so ; and the " hound" 
Garrick at once lent him one hundred pounds. He was 
aggrieved because Garrick did not give it him "off-hand," 
but said instead that he must " see Pritchard, the treas- 
urer, first," on whom Foote might call in the evening, and 
leave his note. These were not very hard conditions ; but 
it was a little, homage which Garrick was not disinclined 
to exact. That very evening the borrower laid out some 
of his cash on a feast, at which he told the most comic 
stories of the lender. He never was so fertile as on this 
theme. He ridiculed his poetry, and added that " David's 
verses were so bad, that if he (Foote) died first, all he 
dreaded was that Garrick would undertake his epitaph." 

Tate Wilkinson, who knew both Garrick and Foote very 
well, viewed them and their relations with each other dif- 
ferently. His rambling gossip about them and himself is 
entertaining. In his Memoirs he gives an interesting 
account of his first introduction to Garrick. He went 
armed with letters from Lord Mansfield and the sister of 
Lord Foley. "I marched," he says, "up and down 
Southampton Street three or four times before I dared 
rap at this great man's door, as fearing instant dismission 
might follow ; or what appeared to me almost as dread- 
ful, if graciously admitted, how I should be able to walk, 
move, or speak before him. However, the rap was at last 
given, and the deed was done past all retreating. ' Is 
Mr. Garrick at home ? ' ' Yes.' Then delivering the let- 
ters, and after waiting in a parlor for about ten minutes, 
I was ordered to approach. Mr. Garrick glanced his 
scrutinizing eye first at me, then at the letters, and so al- 



THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 243 

ternately ; at last — ' Well, sir — Hey ! — What, now you 
are a stage candidate ? Well, sir, let me have a taste of 
your quality.' I distilled almost to jelly with my fear, at- 
tempted a speech from Richard, and another from Essex; 
which he encouraged by observing I was so much fright- 
ened that he could not form any judgment of my abilities ; 
but assured me it was not a bad omen, as fear was by no 
means a sign of want of merit, but often the contrary. 
We then chatted for a few minutes, and I felt myself 
more easy, and requested leave to repeat a few speeches 
in imitation of the then principal stage representatives. 
'Nay — now,' says Garrick; ' sir, you must take care of 
this, for I used to call myself the first at this business.' I 
luckily began with an imitation of Foote. It is difficult 
here to determine whether Garrick hated or feared Foote 
the most ; sometimes one, sometimes the other was pre- 
dominant ; but from the attention of a few minutes, his 
looks brightened — the glow of his countenance trans- 
fused to mine, and he eagerly desired a repetition of the 
same speech. I was animated — forgot Garrick was pres- 
ent, and spoke at perfect ease. ' Hey, now ! Now — what 
— all ' — says Garrick ; ' how —really this — this — is — 
(with his usual hesitation and repetition of words) why — 
well — well — do call on me again on Monday at eleven, 
and you may depend upon every assistance in my power. 
I will see my brother manager, Mr. Lacey, to-day, and let 
you know the result.' " 

" " I would wish," says Wilkinson, " to avoid meanness, 
abuse, or falsehood, and give an exact and candid trait 
of Mr. Garrick and Mr. Foote, with their shades ; but by 
no means to obscure their lights and good qualities, and 
hope I shall prove my words on the examination of the 
sum total, and that my accounts are given in like a just 
steward, and with these gentlemen and myself the reck- 
oning shall be fairly balanced. 

" If any one person possessed the talent of pleasing 



244 CHARACTERISTICS. 

more than another," continues the garrulous Tate, " Mr. 
Foote was certainly the man. I can aver in all my obser- 
vations that I never met with his equal. Mr. Garrick, 
whom I have dined and supped with, was far inferior to 
him in wit or repartee, as indeed were persons of rank 
and degree ; for Nature bestows not all her graces on the 
great or opulent. Mr. Foote was not confined to any 
particular topic ; he was equal to all ; religion, law, poli- 
tics, manners of this or any age, and the stage of course. 
Indeed a polished stranger would find it rare to meet 
with so many agreeable qualities for the conviviality of 
any company so combined as in the society of Mr. Foote. 
This is not the tribute of flattery to his manner, but a 
piece of justice my own impartiality demands ; for it 
would be despicable indeed to point out his foibles, and 
not be ready to attest his good qualities. As a wit he is 
too well remembered, and far beyond my abilities to de- 
scribe. As a blemish to his entertaining and improving 
qualities I must, as a relater of truth remark, that all these 
shining talents did not dazzle or answer the eager expec- 
tation, unless he himself was the sole object of every 
directed eye ; for if a man of genius (I will suppose a 
Murphy or a Henderson) had slipt in a good story, or 
had given any entertaining information, and thereby 
gained the approbation and merit of the flowing souls, 
Foote not only immediately felt lessened, but could not 
easily recover his chagrin and jealousy ; and the instant 
the guest had taken his leave and departed, he could not 
help expressing himself with great contempt, and asking 
the person or persons remaining if they had ever heard 
such nonsense as that man had been uttering. And 
added expressions of wonder how the persons at table 
could be entertained with such absurdity. But, indeed, 
to give the just picture, I must add, as a true historian — 
had the company left him in the best humor, these very 
spirits were only reserved for the exposure of each per- 



THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 245 

son's failure or particular manner, and which most people, 
more or less, have, as a certain appendage, tagged to 
human nature • nor did that happen in a less but even in 
a stronger degree to himself; for his own peculiarities 
were more extravagant than any person's whose gait, or 
gesture, or history he might choose to record or divert 
himself with ; and if not given immediate credit for what 
he asserted against the absentee, he would vigorously fly 
to his happy reserve of never-failing fiction, which was 
veiled under such an appearance of truth, aided by wit, 
humor, and great vivacity, that he generally made con- 
verts, who, from irresistible impulse, obeyed his laughing 
mandates. It was policy to defer, as long as possible, 
quitting the room where he was monarch, as it was cer- 
tain, the instant of any one's exit, without loss of time, he 
would be served up, raw or roasted, to the next comer, 
and that without mercy, although he had at the hour of 
his adieu conferred on Mr. Foote an obligation of the ut- 
most necessary service. . . . 

" Mr. Foote possessed, with all his foibles, mingled ex- 
cellences, generosity and humanity ; but vast ostentation 
was annexed to them. His table was open — he loved 
company at that table, and if they pronounced his wine 
had a superior flavor, they could not drink too much, nor 
could he himself be gratified till he had produced his 
claret of the best vintage. 

" Now Garrick was always in a fidget, eager for atten- 
tion and adulation, and when he thought himself free and 
adored, would prattle such stuff as would disgrace a child 
of eight years old in conversation with its admiring and 
doting grandmamma. His hesitation and never giving 
a direct answer, arose from two causes — affectation, and 
a fear of being led into promises which he never meant to 
perform. ... As to money, he seldom, when walking 
the streets, had any, therefore could only lament his 
inability to give to a distressed supplicant ; but if greatly 



246 CHARACTERISTICS. 

touched — ' Why, Holland,' or any other person that was 
with. him, ' cannot you now advance half a crown ? ' whicu 
if Holland did, was a very good joke, and for fear of 
spoiling the jest, he never paid Holland again." 

One day in Dublin, as Wilkinson was pursuing his 
walk, a strong voice issued from a dining-room window, 
with great vehemence calling out, " Wilkinson ! Wilkin- 
son ! Wilkinson ! " "I looked round," said Wilkinson, 
" and soon spied my Master Foote, as he was termed. He 
insisted on my staying to dinner, which invitation I could 
not refuse ; after dinner, and while the glass was circulat- 
ing, he intimated a wish I would make my first appear- 
ance at Drury Lane as his pupil, in a farce he had newly 
furbished up, and titled the Diversions of the Morning ; 
and added, 'You must, Wilkinson, plainly see and be 
convinced that dirty hound Garrick does not mean to do 
you any service or wish you success ; but on the contrary 
he is a secret enemy, and if he can prevent your doing 
well be assured he will. I know his heart so well, that if 
you give me permission to ask for your first attempt on his 
stage, and to be in my piece, the hound will refuse the 
moment I mention it ; and though his little soul would re- 
joice to act Richard III. in the dogdays, before the hot- 
test kitchen fire for a sop in the pan, yet I know his 
mean soul so perfectly, that if, on his refusal, I with a 
grave face tell him, I have his figure exactly made and 
dressed as a puppet in my closet, ready for public admi- 
ration, the fellow will not only consent to your acting, but 
what is more extraordinary, his abject fears will lend me 
money, if I should say I want it.' " 

Foote having been publicly ridiculed, time and again, 
by Wilkinson, broke friendship with him, and they re- 
mained apart for five years, at the end of which time 
Foote made generous overtures, and they became friends 
again. It hurt Foote to be taken off as much as any of 
his fellows. Wilkinson, in the farce of High Life Below 



THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 247 

Stairs, had been particularly severe upon him. " Before 
my benefit happened," says Wilkinson, " Mr. Foote (who 
of all men in the world ought not to have been offended) 
found himself much hurt and wounded, and so little mas- 
ter of himself, that, notwithstanding the unbounded liber- 
ties he had taken, not only with the players, but others, 
to the disturbance of the peace of private families, he 
actually visited me in great wrath, attended by Mr. Larry 
Kennedy, and in Pistol-like manner protested, ' If I dare 
take any more liberties on the stage in future with him, 
he was determined the next day to call me to account.' 
But I pursued my plan, and was obliged, amongst other 
favors to Mr. Foote, that he was not observant, but let 
me rest in quiet. We often met drawn up at noon in dif- 
ferent parties in the Trinity College Gardens, as perfect 
strangers, but never at any house of visiting • if we had- 
his talent of wit would have forced me to have felt the 
severity of his lash." 

A project of Foote's to publicly ridicule Garrick, fell 
through in a singular manner. The parties met, as if by 
accident, at the house of a nobleman, the common friend 
of both ; when alighting at the same time from their char- 
iots at his lordship's door, and exchanging significant 
looks at each other, Garrick broke silence first by asking, 
" Is it war or peace ? " " Oh ! peace, by all means," said 
Foote, with apparent good will ; and the two spent the 
day together cordially. 

Foote had an especial aversion to attorneys. One of 
this profession, not remarkable for the integrity of his 
character, having a dispute with a bailiff, brought an ac- 
tion against him, which Foote recommended to be com- 
promised. The parties agreed to do it, but differed as to 
who should be arbitrator, and at length requested Foote 
to act in that capacity. " Oh ! no ! " said Foote, " I 
might be partial to one or other of you, but I tell you 
what, I Ti do better — I '11 recommend a thief, as a com- 
mon friend to both." 



248 CHARACTERISTICS. 

Dining while in Paris with Lord Stormont, that thrifty 
Scotch peer, then ambassador, as usual produced his wine 
in the smallest of decanters, and dispensed it in the 
smallest of glasses, enlarging all the time on its exquisite 
growth and enormous age. " It is very little of its age," 
said Foote, holding up his diminutive glass. 

Quin, it is known, was one of the few men who could 
stand a fall with Foote, and come off the better man. 
Foote, who, as we have seen, could not endure a joke 
made on himself, broke friendship with Quin on account 
of such offense. Ultimately they were reconciled; but 
even then Foote referred to the provocation. "Jemmy, 
you should not have said that I had but one shirt, and 
that I lay abed while it was washed." " Sammy," re- 
plied Quin, " I never could have said so, for I never knew 
that you had a shirt to wash ! " 

When down at Stratford, on the occasion of the Shake- 
speare Jubilee, Garrick's success embittered Foote's nat- 
urally bitter spirit. A well-dressed gentleman there civilly 
spoke to him on the proceedings. " Has Warwickshire, 
sir," said Foote, " the advantage of having produced you 
as well as Shakespeare?" " Sir," replied the gentleman, 
" I come from Essex." " Ah ! " rejoined Foote, remem- 
bering that county was famous for calves, — " from Essex. 
Who drove you ? " 

" One may," said Doran, " forgive Foote for his remark 
to Rich, who had been addressing him curtly as ' Mister.' 
Perceiving that Foote was vexed, Rich apologized by say- 
ing, ' I sometimes forget my own name.' ' I am aston- 
ished you could forget your own name,' said Foote, 
1 though I know very well that you are not able to write 
it ! ' " 

Amongst the fairest of Foote's sayings was the reply 
to Mr. Howard's intimation that he was about to publish 
a second edition of his Thoughts and Maxims. " Ay ! 
second thoughts are best." Fair, too, was his retort on 



THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 249 

the person who alluded to his "game leg." "Make no 
allusion to my weakest part. Did I ever attack your 
head?" 

Cooke, in his Memoirs, has preserved many examples 
of Foote's wicked wit. In a song sung by Mrs. Cibber, 
there was this line : 

" The roses will bloom when there 's peace in the breast." 
Foote parodied it : 

The turtles will coo when there 's pease in their craws ; " 

and actually destroyed the popularity of the song. 

A person talking of an acquaintance of his, who was 
so avaricious as even to lament the prospect of his funeral 
expenses, though a short time before he had been cen- 
suring one of his own relatives for his parsimonious tem- 
per : " Now is it not strange," said the person, "that this 
man would not take the beam out of his own eye before 
he attempted the mote in other people's ? " " Why, so I 
dare say he would," cried Foote, "if he was sure of sell- 
ing the timber." 

On his return from Scotland, being asked by a lady 
whether there was any truth in the report that there were 
no trees in Scotland : "A very malicious report indeed, 
my lady," said he ; " for just as I was crossing Portpat- 
rick to Donaghadee, I saw two blackbirds perched on as 
fine a thistle as ever I saw in my life." 

Foote, who lived in habits of intimacy with Lord Kellie, 
took as many liberties with his face (which somewhat re- 
sembled in appearance a meridian sun) as ever Falstaff 
did with his friend Bardolph's. One day his lordship choos- 
ing to forget his promise to dine with him, it piqued Foote 
so, that he called out, loud enough to be heard by the 
whole coffee-house where they were sitting, " Well, my 
lord, since you cannot do me the honor of dining with 
me to-day, will you be so good, as you ride by, just to 
look over against my south wall? for, as we have had 



250 CHARACTERISTICS. 

little or no sun for this fortnight past, my peaches will 
want the assistance of your lordship's countenance." 

His lordship having cracked some jokes upon one of 
his friends rather too coarsely, an Irish gentleman, who 
heard of it, said, " if he had treated him so he would 
pull him by the nose." " Pull him by the nose," said 
Foote ; "you may as well thrust your hand into a furnace.'' 

The same noble lord coming into the club, on a hot 
summer night, dressed in a somewhat tarnished suit of 
laced clothes, the waiter announced "Lord Kellie 1 " 
" Lord Kellie ! " repeated Foote, looking him full in the 
face at the same time, " I thought it was all Monmouth 
street in flames." 

A country squire just come to town, was bragging of 
the great number of fashionable people he had visited 
that morning ; " and among the rest," said he, in a pomp- 
ous deliberate manner, " I called upon my good friend 
the Earl of Chol-mon-dely, but he was not at home." 
" That is rather surprising," said Foote : " what ! nor 
none of his pe-o-ple ? " 

Being on a visit at Crabbe Boulton's (chairman of the 
East India Company) during a frosty season, where they 
kept very bad fires, Foote found himself so uncomforta- 
ble, that he prepared next morning for setting off to town. 
" Eh ! " said his host, seeing the chaise at the door, " Why 
think of going so soon ? " " Because, if I stay any longer, 
perhaps I shall not have a leg to stand upon." "Why, 
we don't drink so hard." " No ; but it freezes so hard, 
and your servants know the value of a good bit of 
timber so well, that I 'm in hourly dread of losing my 
wooden leg." 

Paul Hiffernan, a mendicant author who attended 
Foote's levees, was fond of laying, or rather offering, 
wagers. One day, in the heat of argument, he cried out, 
" I '11 lay my head you are wrong upon that point." 
" Well," said Foote, " I accept the wager ; any trifle 
among friends has a value." 



THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 25 I 

" Pray," said a lady to Foote, " what sort of a man is 
Sir John D. ? " " Oh ! a very good sort of man." " But 
what do you call a good sort of man ? " " Why, madam, 
one who preserves all the exterior decencies of igno- 
rance." 

An author left a comedy with Foote for perusal ; and 
on the next visit asked for his judgment on it, with rather 
an ignorant degree of assurance. " If you looked a little 
more to the grammar of it, I think," said Foote, " it would 
be better." " To the grammar of it, sir ! What ! Would 
you send one to school again ? " " And pray, sir," replied 
Foote very gravely, " would that do you any harm ? " 

A clergyman in Essex, not much celebrated as a 
preacher, used to wear boots generally on duty ; and gave 
as a reason for it, that " the roads were so deep in some 
places, that he found them more convenient than shoes." 
"Yes," said Foote; "and I dare say, equally convenient 
in the pulpit ; for there the doctor is generally out of his 
depth too." 

Foote called upon a gentleman of the law who did not 
live happily with his wife. The servant maid soon after- 
ward came into the room to look for her mistress. " What 
do you want your mistress for?" asked the barrister. 
" Why, indeed, sir, to tell you the truth, she scolds me so 
from morning to night, I come to give her warning." 
" What, then you mean to leave us ? " " Certainly, sir," 
said she, shutting the door after her. " Happy girl ! " 
exclaimed Foote ; " I most sincerely wish your poor mas- 
ter could give warning too." 

A conceited young man asking Foote what apology he 
should make for not being one of the party the day before 
to which he had a card of invitation ; " Oh, my dear sir ! " 
replied the wit ; " say nothing about it j you were never 
missed." 

You remember Foote's advice to the Duke of Norfolk. 
On a masquerade night, his Grace consulted the famous 



252 CHARACTERISTICS. 

actor as to what character he should appear in. " Don't 
go disguised," said Foote, " but assume a new character 
— go sober." (It was the successor of the Duke of Nor- 
folk in question who consulted Abernethy for some ail- 
ment, and was asked whether he had ever tried the 
remedy of a clean shirt.) 

Foote, being notoriously lavish with his money, was 
fond of taking off Garrick's reputed niggardliness. Here 
is an anecdote that Rogers was fond of relating, and 
which he is said to have told with infinite humor. At the 
Chapter Coffee-house, Foote and his friends were making 
a contribution for the relief of a poor fellow, a decayed 
player, who was nicknamed the Captain of the Four 
Winds, because his hat was worn into four spouts. Each 
person of the company dropped his mite into the hat, 
as it was held out to him. "If Garrick hears of this," 
exclaimed Foote, "he will certainly send us his hat." 
" There is a witty satirical story of Foote," said Johnson 
to Boswell. " He had a small bust of Garrick placed 
upon his bureau. 'You may be surprised,' said he, 'that 
I allow him to be so near my gold : but you will observe 
he has no hands ! ' " Foote and Garrick were leaving 
the Bedford one night when Foote had been the enter- 
tainer, and on his pulling out his purse to pay the bill, a 
guinea dropped. Impatient at not immediately finding 
it, " Where on earth can it be gone to ? " he said. " Gone 
to the devil, I think," rejoined Garrick, who had sought 
for it everywhere. "Well said, David," cried Foote; "let 
you alone for making a guinea go farther than any body 
else." " Garrick and Foote," says Forster, " were among 
the company one day at the dinner-table of Lord Mans- 
field. Many grave people were there, and the manager 
of Drury Lane was on his best good company behavior. 
Every one listened deferentially to him as he enlarged on 
the necessity of prudence in all the relations of life, and 
drew his illustration from Churchill's death, which was 



THE AUDACITY OF FOOTE. 253 

then the talk of the town. No one would have supposed 
it possible to dislodge him from such vantage-ground as 
this, surrounded by all the decorums of life, and with a 
Lord Chief Justice at the head of the table. But Foote 
suddenly struck in. He said that every question had two 
sides, and he had long made up his mind on the advan- 
tages implied in the fact of not paying one's debts. In the 
first place, it presupposed some time or other the posses- 
sion of fortune to be able to get credit. Then, living on 
credit was the art of living without the most troublesome 
thing in the whole world, which was money. It saved 
the expense and annoyance of keeping accounts, and 
made over all the responsibility to other people. It was 
the panacea for the cares and embarrassments of wealth. 
It checked and discountenanced avarice ; while, people 
being always more liberal of others' goods than their own, 
it extended every sort of encouragement to generosity. 
And would any one venture to say that payment of one's 
debts could possibly draw to us such anxious attention 
from our own part of the world while we live, or such sin- 
cere regrets when we die, as not paying them. All which, 
Foote put with such whimsical gravity, and supported 
with such a surprising abundance of sarcastic illustra- 
tion, that in the general laughter against Garrick no laugh 
was heartier than Lord Mansfield's." 

Macklin's topic, we are told, at one of his evening lec- 
tures, was the employment of memory in connection with 
the oratorical art, in the course of which, as he enlarged 
on the importance of exercising memory as a habit, he 
took occasion to say, that to such perfection he had 
brought his own he could learn any thing by rote on once 
hearing it. Foote waited till the conclusion of the lecture, 
and then handing up the subjoined sentences, desired that 
Mr. Macklin would be good enough to read and after- 
ward repeat them from memory. More amazing nonsense 
never was written. " So she went into the garden to cut 



254 CHARACTERISTICS. 

a cabbage-leaf, to make an apple-pie ; and at the same 
time a great she-bear, coming up the street, pops its head 
into the shop. 'What ! no soap?' So he died, and she 
very imprudently married the barber; and there were 
present the Picninnies, and the Joblillies, and the Garyu- 
lies, and the Grand Panjandrum himself, with the little 
round button at top ; and they all fell to playing the game 
of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran out at the 
heels of their boots." 

One of the many victims of Foote's humor and mimicry 
was Alderman George Faulkner. He took off the Alder- 
man, wooden leg and all, under the name of Peter Para- 
graph. Soon afterward he went on a visit with the Duke 
of York to Lord Mexborough's, where, in hunting, he 
rode a too spirited horse, and received so severe a hurt 
that his left leg had to be amputated. Old Lord Ches- 
terfield, who had sympathized with Faulkner in his bit- 
terness toward Foote, eagerly informed Faulkner of the 
accident, and expressed his satisfaction that Heaven had 
avenged his cause by punishing his adversary in the part 
offending. The same thought had of course occurred 
to the satirist himself. " Now I shall take off old Faulk- 
ner indeed to the life ! " was the first remark he made 
when what he had to suffer was announced to him. 
Time, for once at least, had his revenge, and mercilessly 
made things even. 



X. 

HABIT. 

Nothing is becoming, it is said, which is not habitual. 
It may be said as well, that life would be intolerable if 
habit did not relieve it. Think of thinking of every 
thing you do ! Life is so made up of infinite little things, 
that the infinite little things must of necessity be done as 
they have been done before. Almost mechanically, so 
habitually most of them are done : they seem even to do 
themselves. Life itself goes on : breath following breath 
— almost as unconsciously waking as sleeping. Pretty 
certainly, if almost any human being were compelled, for 
a single day, to think, to reason originally of his every 
act, even for that short period, he would lose the power 
of reasoning. Habitually, almost every one dresses one 
foot before the other, without thinking of it. When a 
hand goes to the face, it touches, almost invariably, one 
part before another. When you climb the stairs, the left 
foot or the right begins the process. And so of a hun- 
dred things you do every day. Think of them : one will 
suggest another. You will be surprised to see how your 
life is made up of unconsciously formed habits — small 
and great — for better or for worse. That you are good 
or bad from habit mainly, a little self-observation and re- 
flection will reveal to you. " All is habit in mankind," 
exclaimed Metastasio, — "even virtue itself." 

" I trust every thing under God," said Lord Brougham, 
" to habit, upon which in all ages, the lawgiver as well as 
the schoolmaster, has mainly placed his reliance ; habit, 
which makes every thing easy, and casts all difficulties 



256 CHARACTERISTICS. 

upon the deviation from a wonted course. Make sobriety 
a habit, and intemperance will be hateful ; make pru- 
dence a habit, and reckless profligacy will be as contrary 
to the nature of the child, grown or adult, as the most 
atrocious crimes. Give a child the habit of sacredly re- 
garding the truth; of carefully respecting the property of 
others ; of scrupulously abstaining from all acts of im- 
providence which can involve him in distress, and he will 
just as likely think of rushing into an element in which 
he cannot breathe, as of lying, cheating, or swearing." 

One of the wisest and most suggestive precepts to be 
found in Plutarch's Morals cannot be too often repeated : 
" Choose but the best condition you can, and custom will 
make it pleasant to you." "You may take my word," 
says Sterne, in the opening chapter of Tristram Shandy, 
" that nine parts in ten of a man's sense, or his nonsense, 
his successes and miscarriages in this world, depend upon 
the motions and activity of the animal spirits, and the 
different tracks and trains you put them into ; so that 
when they are once set a-going, whether right or wrong, 
'tis not a half-penny matter, — away they go clattering 
like hey-go mad ; and by treading the same steps over and 
over again, they presently make a road of it, as plain and 
as smooth as a garden-walk, which when they are once 
used to, the devil himself shall not be able to drive them 
off it." So great is the power of habit, that it has been 
often remarked, says Scott, in one of his romances, that 
when a man commences by acting a character he fre- 
quently ends by adopting it in good earnest. So soon 
as Ravenswood had determined upon giving the Lord 
Keeper such hospitality as he had to offer, he deemed it 
incumbent on him to assume the open and courteous 
brow of a well-pleased host. In the course of an hour 
or . two, Ravenswood, to his own surprise, found himself 
in the situation of one who frankly does his best to en- 
tertain welcome and honored guests. 



HABIT. 257 

Dr. Johnson was of opinion that the force of our early- 
habits was so great, that though reason approved, nay, 
though our senses relished a different course, almost every 
man returned to them. 

Layard relates an incident of a party of Arabs which 
for some time had been employed to assist him in exca- 
vating among the ruins of Nineveh. One evening, after 
their day's work, he observed them following a flock of 
sheep belonging to the people of the village, shouting 
their war-cry, flourishing their swords, and indulging in 
the most extravagant gesticulations. He asked one of 
the most active of the party to explain to him the cause 
of such violent proceedings. " O Bey ! " they exclaimed, 
almost together, " God be praised, we have eaten butter 
and wheaten bread under your shadow, and are content ; 
but an Arab is an Arab. It is not for a man to carry- 
about dirt in baskets, and to use a spade all his life ; he 
should be with his sword and his mare in the desert. 
We are sad as we think of the days when we plundered 
the Anayza, and we must have excitement or our hearts 
must break. Let us then believe that these are the sheep 
we have taken from the enemy, and that we are driving 
them to our tents." And off they ran, raising their wild 
cry, and flourishing their swords, to the no small alarm 
of the shepherd, who saw his sheep scampering in all 
directions. 

" I have," says Montaigne, " picked up boys from beg- 
ging, to serve me, who soon after have quitted both my 
kitchen and livery, only that they might return to their 
former course of life ; and I found one afterward picking 
up mussels in our neighborhood for his dinner, whom I 
could neither by entreaties nor threats reclaim from the 
sweetness he found in indigence." 

Habit sometimes produces curious and amusing phys- 
ical adaptations. " The police of Naples," says Hillard, 
in his Six Months in Italy, " are said to practice a singu- 
17 



258 CHARACTERISTICS. 

lar test, to ascertain whether a lad accused of picking a 

pocket be guilty or not. The culprit is required to place 
his hand upon a table with his fingers outstretched, and 
if the forefinger and middle finger be of the same length, 
the case goes against him, and judgment is passed ac- 
cordingly; for, in the exercise of this profession, these 
two fingers are made use of like a forceps, and the young 
ragamuffins in the streets are said to encourage the 
growth of the forefinger by habitually pulling it." 

" On Sundays, at noon," says the same interesting 
writer, " the pigeons of St. Mark's are fed. As the hour 
approaches, flock after flock of hungry expectants comes 
wheeling in, and the air is filled with the rustling of in- 
numerable wings, from which the sunshine is flung in 
dazzling beams." The pigeons of Venice know when 
Sunday at noon comes. 

A clergyman who filled one of the Boston pulpits, 
drove every morning into the city. His horse, from habit, 
and without any suggestion from his master, went, week- 
day mornings, directly to the post-office ; Sundays, he 
went straight to the church. A friend once told us of a 
dog belonging to one of his relations — a Quaker. First- 
days and fifth-days the dog always went to meeting. If 
the family went, he went with them ; if not, he went 
alone. And he always occupied the same spot in the 
meeting-house. 

Lord Thurlow habituated himself to such a majestic 
air, that it came to be asked whether any one could really 
be as wise as Lord Thurlow always seemed. Talleyrand's 
habit of mind was so wary and suspicious, that, when a 
celebrated diplomatist fell ill, he inquired, "What does 
he mean by it ? " 

The power of habit is exemplified in the case of Jon- 
athan Wild and Count Fathom : Wild could not keep 
his hands out of the Count's pockets, although he knew 
they were empty; nor could the Count abstain from 



HABIT. 259 

palming a card, although he was well aware Wild had no 
money to pay him. In his last hours, whilst the ordi- 
nary was busy in his ejaculations, Wild, in the midst of 
the shower of stones, etc., which played upon him, ap- 
plied his hand to the parson's pocket, and emptied it of 
his corkscrew, which he carried out of the world in his 
hand. 

The practice of hanging in chains, although discontin- 
ued before its formal abolition, lasted far into the present 
century. Within living memory, it is stated, a batch of 
pirates was hung in chains in the marshes before Wool- 
wich. A farmer and his son who rented the ground hap- 
pening to take a close inspection of the victims, saw 
symptoms of life in one, took him down, carried him 
home with them, and employed him as a farm servant ; 
till one night, finding him at his old trade of thieving, 
they laid hold of him, twisted his neck, and replaced him 
on the gallows ; not at all imagining that they had been 
guilty of any description of irregularity. 

After Gulliver had been snatched from Brobdingnag by 
the eagle, and rescued from the sea, he astonished Cap- 
tain Wilcocks by the loudness of his voice. He ex- 
plained it by saying that he had been used to that tone 
for two years ; that " when he spoke in that country, it 
was like a man talking in the streets, to another looking 
out from the top of a steeple." 

" A tallow chandler," says Southey, in The Doctor, 
"having amassed a fortune, disposed of his business, 
and took a house in the country, not far from London, 
that he might enjoy himself ; but, after a few months' 
trial of a holiday life, requested permission of his .suc- 
cessor to come into town and assist him on melting-days. 
The keeper of a retail spirit-shop, having in like manner 
retired from trade, used to employ himself by having one 
puncheon filled with water, and measuring it off by pints 
into another. A butcher in a small town, for some little 



260 CHARACTERISTICS. 

time after he had left off business, informed his old cus- 
tomers that he meant to kill a lamb once a week, just for 
amusement." 

Sergeant Ballantine commenced practice in Inner Tem- 
ple Lane. His father furnished his chambers, and one of 
the principal articles he sent him was a horse-hair arm- 
chair -with only three legs, upon which the future great 
barrister got so accustomed to balance himself that he 
scarcely felt safe on one furnished with the proper com- 
plement. 

Avarice is a vice that is especially the product of habit j 
and it grows and grows to the end. " Other vices," says 
St. Ambrose, " decay with our age ; but avarice renews 
its youth." An epitaph on a rude grave-stone in Cali- 
fornia puts it more forcibly if not so philosophically and 
elegantly : 

" Here lies old Thirty-five per cent. ! 

The more he got the more he lent ; 

The more he got the more he craved ; 

The more he made the more he shaved — 

Good God ! can such a soul be saved ? " 

Foster, in his famous essay On Decision of Character, 
mentions a young man "who wasted in two or three 
years a large patrimony in profligate revels with a num- 
ber of worthless associates who called themselves his 
friends, and who, when his last means were exhausted, 
treated him of course with neglect or contempt. Reduced 
to absolute want he one day went out of the house with 
an intention to put an end to his life j but wandering 
awhile, almost unconsciously, he came to the brow of an 
eminence which overlooked what were lately his estates. 
Here he sat down, and remained fixed in thought a num- 
ber of hours, at the end of which he sprang from the 
ground with a vehement, exulting emotion. He had 
formed his resolution, which was, that all these estates 
should be his again ; he had formed his plan too, which 



HABIT. 26l 

he instantly began to execute. He walked hastily for- 
ward, determined to seize the very first opportunity, of 
however humble a kind, to gain any money, though it 
were ever so despicable a trifle, and resolved absolutely 
not to spend, if he could help it, a farthing of whatever 
he might obtain. The first thing that drew his attention 
was a heap of coals shot out of carts on the pavement 
before a house. He offered himself to shovel or wheel 
them into the place where they were to be laid, and was 
employed. He received a few pence for the labor ; and 
then, in pursuance of the saving part of his plan, re- 
quested some small gratuity of meat and drink, which 
was given him. He then looked out for the next thing 
that might chance to offer ; and went, with indefatigable 
industry, through a succession of servile employments, in 
different places, of longer and shorter duration, still scru- 
pulously avoiding, as far as possible, the expense of a 
penny. He promptly seized every opportunity which 
could advance his design, without regarding the mean- 
ness of occupation or appearance. By this method he 
had gained, after a considerable time, money enough to 
purchase, in order to sell again, a few cattle, of which he 
had taken pains to understand the value. He speedily 
but cautiously turned his first gains into second advan- 
tages \ retained without a single deviation his extreme 
parsimony ; and thus advanced by degrees into larger 
transactions and incipient wealth." The essayist did not 
hear, or had forgotten, the continued course of his life ; 
but the final result was, that he more than recovered his 
lost possessions, and died an inveterate miser, worth hun- 
dreds of thousands of dollars. 

The avarice of the great Duke of Marlborough is his- 
torical. " One day," said Pope to Spence, " as the duke 
was looking over some papers in his scrutoire with Lord 
Cadogan, he opened one of his little drawers, took out a 
green purse, and turned some broad pieces out of it. 



262 CHARACTERISTICS. 

After viewing them for some time, with a satisfaction that 
appeared very visibly in his face ; ' Cadogan,' said he, 
' observe these pieces well ! They deserve to be ob- 
served ; there are just forty of them : 't is the very first sum 
I ever got in my life, and I have kept it always unbroken 
from that time to this day.' This shows how early, and 
how strongly, this passion must have been upon him." 

You recollect that fine passage of Macaulay's in his 
History : " Avarice is rarely the vice of a young man ; it 
is rarely the vice of a great man ; but Marlborough was 
one of the few who have, in the bloom of youth, loved 
lucre more than wine or women, and who have, at the 
height of greatness, loved lucre more than power or fame. 
All the precious gifts which nature had lavished on him 
he valued chiefly for what they would fetch. At twenty 
he made money of his beauty and his vigor. At sixty he 
made money of his genius and his glory. The applauses 
which were justly due to his conduct at Walcourt could 
not altogether drown the voices of those who muttered 
that, wherever a broad piece was to be saved or got, this 
hero was a mere Euclio, a mere Harpagon ; that, though 
he drew a large allowance under pretense of keeping a 
public table, he never asked an officer to dinner ; that his 
muster rolls were fraudulently made up ; that he pocketed 
pay in the names of men who had long been dead, of 
men who had been killed in his own sight four years be- 
fore at Sedgemoor ; that there were twenty such names in 
one troop ; that there were thirty-six in another." 

A beggar once asked an alms of Lord Peterborough, 
and called him by mistake " My Lord Marlborough." " I 
am not Lord Marlborough," replied the earl, " and to 
prove it to you, here is a guinea." Lord Bolingbroke, 
writing to one of his friends, said, " I am very sorry my 
Lord Marlborough gives you so much trouble. It is the 
only thing he will give you." The duke, some years be- 
fore his death, retired occasionally to Bath, and often 



HABIT. 263 

amused himself with cards, though he seldom ventured 
to play high. One night he was engaged at piquet with 
Dean Jones, from whom he had won sixpence, and ex- 
acted payment. The dean declared he had no silver, 
but borrowed the money, as the duke said he wanted it 
to pay for his sedan chair. The dean, knowing the 
duke's avarice, watched him, and saw him actually walk- 
ing home, in order to save the sixpence. Pope speaks 
of him as one who would " Now save a sixpence, and now 
save a groat." 

" You don't say that your husband the duke is with- 
out faults ? " said Lady Sunderland to the Duchess of 
Marlborough. " By no means," was the reply : " I knew 
them better than he did himself, or even than I do my 
own. He came back one day from my poor misled mis- 
tress Queen Anne (I believe when he resigned his com- 
mission), and said he had told her, that he thanked God, 
with all his faults, neither avarice nor ambition could be 
laid to his charge." 

Crabb Robinson, in his Diary, speaks of one of these 
habitual accumulators for whom his nephew made a will. 
The man was supposed to be at the point of death, and 
he produced from under his bed, in gold and silver, up- 
wards of fifteen hundred dollars. A banker's clerk was 
sent for, and the money was secured. When the old wife 
found out what had taken place, she scolded him with 
such fury that she went into a fit and died. The man 
in great agitation produced an additional one thousand 
and forty dollars ; but this he insisted on giving away ab- 
solutely to some poor people who were near him, and 
had served him. The money was tied up in old stock- 
ings and filthy rags. When he was informed of his wife's 
death, he eagerly demanded her pockets, and took from 
them a few shillings with great avidity. The accumula- 
tion was the result of a life of continued abstinence. 

There is an account of a millionaire who was accused 



264 CHARACTERISTICS. 

of wishing to invest the accumulations of more than half 
a century in one big bank-note, and carry it out of the 
world with him. When Lord Erskine heard that some- 
body had died worth two hundred thousand pounds, he 
observed, " Well, that 's a very pretty sum to begin the 
next world with." 

Rousseau went to Venice as Secretary to the French 
ambassador, the Count of Montaign. Avarice was the 
count's most remarkable trait. Careful observation had 
persuaded him that three shoes are equivalent to two 
pairs, because there is always one of a pair which is more 
worn than the other ; and hence he habitually ordered 
his shoes in threes. 

La Fontaine was always forgetting himself. Having 
attended the funeral of a friend, he was so absent-minded 
as to call upon him a short time afterwards. Being re- 
minded of the fact, he was at first greatly surprised, but 
recollecting himself, said : " It is true enough, for I was 
there." 

Ampere, the great mathematician, wrote rather by mov- 
ing his arm than his fingers, and in a hand so immense 
that a gentleman sent him an invitation to dinner penned 
within the outline of the first letter of his signature. 

The attendant of the elder Mathews in his last illness 
intended to give his patient some medicine ; but a few 
minutes afterward it was discovered that the medicine 
was nothing but ink, which had been taken from the 
phial by mistake, and his friend exclaimed, " Good Heav- 
ens, Mathews, I have given you ink ! " " Never mind, 
my boy," said Mathews, faintly (joking to the last), "I'll 
swallow a bit of blotting paper." 

People objected (in Bleak House) to Professor Dingo 
(Mrs. Badger's second husband), that he disfigured some 
of the houses and other buildings by chipping off frag- 
ments of those edifices with jiis little geological hammer. 
But the professor replied that he knew of no building, 



HABIT. 265 

save the Temple of Science. In his last illness (his mind 
wandering), he insisted on keeping his little hammer 
under the pillow, and chipping at the countenances of the 
attendants. 

Kant, to aid his thoughts, had a habit of fixing his at- 
tention closely on some one auditor, and' judged by him 
whether he was understood. Once a button on a stu- 
dent's coat, which he had made his fixed point of vision, 
being. lost, disconcerted the philosopher and interrupted 
the lecture. A tower on which he used to gaze, in his 
reveries at home, having become hidden by the growth of 
trees, he could not rest until the foliage was cut away. 
Neander had a habit, when he was lecturing, of playing 
with a goose-quill which his amanuensis always provided 
for him, constantly crossing and recrossing his feet, his 
figure bent forward, and his head down, except when 
excited," when it suddenly went up, at such times, we are 
told, fairly threatening to turn the desk over. Madame 
de Stael, it is stated, had a way, while she discoursed, of 
taking a scrap of paper and a pair of scissors, and snip- 
ping it to bits, as an employment for her fingers. Once 
she was observed to be at a loss for this her usual 
mechanical resource, when a gentleman quietly placed 
near her the back of a letter from his pocket : afterward 
she earnestly thanked him for this timely supply of the 
means she desired as a needful aid to thought and speech. 
Gibbon held a pinch of snuff between his finger and 
thumb while he told an anecdote, invariably dropping the 
pinch at the point of the story. Lord Bacon had a habit 
of " wringing his speeches from the strings of his bands," 
and Ben Jonson of " drawing poetic inspiration from his 
great toe." " He hath," says Drummond of Hawthorn- 
den, " consumed a whole night in lying looking to his 
great toe, about which he hath seen Tartars and Turks, 
Romans and Carthaginians, fight in imagination." Schiller 
kept a drawer in his work-room always filled with rotten 



266 CHARACTERISTICS. 

apples. " I called on him one day," said Goethe, " and 
as I did not find him at home, and his wife told me that 
he would soon return, I seated myself at his work-table to 
note down various matters. I had not been seated long 
before I felt a strange indisposition steal over me, which 
gradually increased, until at last I nearly fainted. At 
first I did not know to what cause I should ascribe this 
wretched and, to me, unusual state, until I discovered 
that a dreadful odor issued from a drawer near me. 
When I opened it, I found to my astonishment that it 
was full of rotten apples. I immediately went to the 
window and inhaled the fresh air, by which I felt myself 
instantly restored. In the mean time his wife had re- 
entered, and told me that the drawer was always filled 
with rotten apples, because the scent was beneficial to 
Schiller, and he could not live or work without it." 

One day they were waiting dinner at Charles Sheridan's 
for Dr. Johnson. " Take out your opera-glass," said the 
host to one of his guests ; " Johnson is coming; you may 
know him by his gait." " I passed him," responded the 
guest, " at a good distance, working along with a peculiar 
solemnity of deportment, and an awkward sort of meas- 
ured step. At that time the broad flagging at each side 
the streets was not universally adopted, and stone posts 
were in fashion to prevent the annoyance of carriages. 
Upon every post, as he passed along, I could observe, he 
deliberately laid his hand : but missing one of them, when 
he had got at some distance, he seemed suddenly to rec- 
ollect himself, and immediately returning back, carefully 
resumed his former course, not omitting one till he 
gained the crossing." This, Mr. Sheridan stated, however 
odd it might appear, was his constant practice ; but why 
or wherefore he could give no information. 

"Dr. Johnson had another particularity," says Bos- 
well, " of which none of his friends ever ventured to ask 
an explanation. It appeared to me some superstitious 



HABIT. 267 

habit, which he had contracted early, and from which he 
had never called upon his reason to disentangle him. 
This was his anxious care to go out or in, at a door or 
passage, by a certain number of stages from a certain 
point, or at least so as that either his right or his left 
foot (I am not certain which) should constantly make 
the first actual movement when he came close to the 
door or passage. Thus I conjecture ; for I have, upon 
innumerable occasions, observed him suddenly stop, and 
then seem to count his steps with a deep earnestness ; 
and when he had neglected or gone wrong in this sort of 
magical movement, I have seen him go back again, put 
himself in a proper posture to begin the ceremony, and, 
having gone through it, break from his abstraction, walk 
briskly on, and join his companion." Sir Joshua Rey- 
nolds had observed him to go a good way about, rather 
than cross a particular alley ; but this Sir Joshua imputed 
to his having had some disagreeable recollection asso- 
ciated with it. 

Malherbe, the French poet, on account of a delicate 
ear and refined taste, and a habit of criticising every thing 
that he saw or heard, was called " the tyrant of words 
and syllables." When dying, his confessor, in speaking 
of the happiness of heaven, expressed himself inaccu- 
rately. " Say no more about it," said Malherbe, " or 
your style will disgust me with it." 

Readers of Rabelais will remember that on one occa- 
sion Gargantua could not sleep by any means, on which 
side soever he turned himself. Whereupon Friar John 
said to him, I never sleep soundly but when I am at ser- 
mon or prayers. Let us therefore begin, you and I, the 
Seven Penitential Psalms, to try whether you shall not 
quickly fall asleep. The conceit pleased Gargantua very 
well, and, beginning the first of these psalms, as soon as 
they came to the words, Beati quorum, they fell asleep 
both the one and the other. 



268 CHARACTERISTICS. 

The detestable habit of fault-finding — too common in 
this world, as all good-natured people know — was once, 
we remember, most effectually rebuked by Crabb Rob- 
inson. It was during one of his visits to Paris. A great 
part of a day had been spent sight-seeing with a London 
acquaintance, who said to him at parting, " I will call for 
you to-morrow." " I will thank you not to call," replied 
the kindly and philosophic barrister. " I would rather 
not see any thing else with you, and I will tell you 
frankly why. I am come to Paris to enjoy myself, and 
that enjoyment needs the accompaniment of sympathy 
with others. Now, you dislike every thing, and find fault 
with every thing. You see nothing which you do not find 
inferior to what you have seen before. This may be all 
very true, but it makes me very uncomfortable. I be- 
lieve, if I were forced to live with you, I should kill my- 
self. So I shall be glad to see you in London, but no 
more in Paris." 

In contrast with this habit of fault-finding is the phil- 
osophic turn of mind that finds the bright side of things, 
and turns even misfortunes into blessings. Nathan 
James, of the Alamo, once owned a large merino ewe 
which he valued highly. His son informed him one 
morning that his favorite ewe had twins. Mr. James 
said he "was glad; she could bring up two as well as 
one." Soon after, the son reported one of the twins 
dead. The father said, " the one left would be worth 
more in the autumn than both." In the afternoon the 
boy told his father that the other lamb was dead. " I am 
glad," said he ; " I can now fatten the old sheep for mut- 
ton." In the morning the boy reported the old ewe dead. 
" That is just what I wanted," said the old farmer; "now 
I am rid of the breed." 

The rapid growth of a habit of committing improper 
or unlawful acts, is shown in an instance given by Dr. 
Hammond, in a recent interesting article entitled A 



HABIT. 269 

Problem for Sociologists. A lady came under his ob- 
servation who was subject to no delusion, and who had 
never exhibited any evidence of mental alienation except 
in showing an impulse, which she declared she could not 
control, to throw valuable articles into the fire. At first, 
as she said in her confession to the doctor, the impulse 
was excited by the satisfaction she derived from seeing 
an old pair of slippers curl up into fantastic shapes after 
she had thrown them into a blazing wood-fire. She re- 
peated the act the following day, but, not having a pair 
of old shoes to burn, she used instead a felt hat which 
was no longer fashionable. But this did not undergo con- 
tortions like the shoes, and therefore she had no pleasur- 
able sensations like those of the day before, and thus, as 
far as any satisfaction was concerned, the experiment was 
a failure. On the ensuing day, however, she felt, to her 
great surprise, that it would be a pleasant thing to burn 
something. She was very clear that this pleasure con- 
sisted solely in the fulfillment of an impulse which, to a 
great extent, had been habitual. She therefore seized a 
handsomely bound prayer-book which lay on the table, 
and throwing it into the fire, turned away her face, and 
walked to another part of the room. It was very certain, 
therefore, that she was no longer gratified by the sight of 
the burning articles. She went on repeating these acts 
with her own things, and even with those which did not 
belong to her, until she became a nuisance to herself, and 
to all those with whom she had any relations. Her de- 
structive propensities stopped at nothing which was cap- 
able of being consumed. Books, bonnets, shawls, laces, 
handkerchiefs, and even table-cloths and bed-linen, helped 
to swell the list of her sacrifices. As soon as she had 
thrown the articles into the fire, the impulse was satis- 
fied. She did not care to see them burn ; on the con- 
trary, the sight was rather disagreeable to her than other- 
wise. But the power which affected her the way it did, 



270 CHARACTERISTICS. 

she represented as being imperative, and, if not immedi- 
ately allowed to act, giving rise to the most irritable and 
unpleasant sensations, which she could not describe other- 
wise than by saying that she felt as if she would have to 
fly, or jump, or run, and that there was a feeling under 
the skin all over the body as though the flesh were in 
motion. As soon as she had yielded to the impulse, these 
sensations departed. 

The habit of scolding, it may not be improper to say, 
is of like rapid growth, and soon ends in a species of 
noxious insanity, which few persons in this world are 
happy enough to avoid seeing frequent exhibitions of, 
to say nothing of the supreme delectation of being able 
altogether to escape being its victims. Husbands, wives, 
schoolmasters, clergymen, unmarried men and unmarried 
women of a certain age — all are liable to this distress- 
ing, detestable, nearly incurable mental and moral mal- 
ady. God help us ! 

Perhaps no really great man ever existed who had the 
habit of detraction and vituperation to compare with 
Thomas Carlyle. To him, the Edinburgh clergy were 
" narrow, ignorant, and barren without exception." He 
rode sixty miles to consult an eminent Edinburgh physi- 
cian. " Found," he says, " after long months, that I 
might as well have ridden sixty miles in the opposite di- 
rection, and poured my sorrows into the long hairy ear of 
the first jackass I came upon, as into the select med- 
ical man's." " I knew Robert Burns," he says, " and I 
knew my father. Yet were you to ask me which had the 
greater natural faculty, I might actually pause before re- 
plying." " It was not with aversion that my father re- 
garded Burns ; at worst, with indifference and neglect." 
"Intrinsically a poor creature this Bulwer," he wrote; 
"has a bustling whisking agility and restlessness which 
may support him in a certain degree of significance with 
some, but which partakes much of the nature of levity. 



HABIT. 271 

Nothing truly notable can come of him or of it." " One 
of the wretchedest Phantasms I had yet fallen in with." 
De Quincey was " a pretty little creature, full of wire- 
drawn ingenuities, bankrupt enthusiasm, bankrupt pride," 
etc. "Poor, fine-strung weak creature, launched so into 
the literary career of ambition and mother of dead dogs " 
(as he called London). " Shaped like a pair of tongs." 
Leigh Hunt, who was very useful and kind to him in 
many ways, " had to be associated with on cautious 
terms." " Good humor and no common sense." " Hug- 
germugger was the type of his economies, in all respects, 
financial and other." (This of the ''beautiful old man," 
as Hawthorne calls him, who, when he told the news of 
his pension, received the kiss from Mrs. Carlyle which he 
immortalized in the improvisation : — 

" Jenny kissed me when we met, 

Jumping from the chair she sat in. 
Time, you thief ! who love to get 

Sweets into your list, put that in. 
Say I 'm weary, say I 'm sad ; 

Say that health and wealth have missed me ; 
Say I 'm growing old, but add — 

Jenny kissed me ! " 

"I wish," said Hawthorne, " that he could have had one 
full draught of prosperity before he died ; as a matter 
of artistic propriety, it would have been delightful to see 
him inhabiting a beautiful house of his own, in an Italian 
climate, with all sorts of elaborate upholstery and minute 
elegances about him, and a succession of tender and 
lovely women to praise his sweet poetry from morning to 
night.") " Coleridge," grumbles the philosopher, " a puf- 
fy, anxious, obstructed-looking, fattish old man, hobbled 
about with us, talking with a kind of solemn emphasis on 
matters which were of no interest." Milnes, one of the 
English friends who most appreciated him, he describes 
as " a pretty, robin-redbreast of a man." Of Wordsworth 



2^2 CHARACTERISTICS. 

he says, "Franker utterances of mere garrulities and 
even platitudes I never heard from any man." Southey 
is " shovel-hatted ; the shovel hat is grown to him." 
Thackeray is " a big, fierce, weeping, hungry man ; not a 
strong one." Tennyson, though "a true human soul," is 
a man " dwelling in an element of gloom — carrying a bit 
of Chaos about him, in short, which he is manufacturing 
into Cosmos." Landor's " intellectual faculty," seemed 
to him " to be weak in proportion to his violence of tem- 
per; the judgment he gives about any thing is more apt 
to be wrong than right." Of Lamb, he says, " At his own 
house, I saw him once ; once I gradually felt to have 
been enough for me." " His talk contemptibly small, in- 
dicating wondrous ignorance and shallowness, even when 
it was serious and good-mannered, which it seldom was." 
" A more pitiful, rickety, grasping, staggering, stammer- 
ing tomfool I do not know." " Poor England, when such 
a despicable abortion is named genius." Of Basil Mon- 
tagu, whose hospitality he often enjoyed, he says : " Much 
a bore to you by degrees, and considerably a humbug if 
you probed too strictly." "Washington," he writes, "is 
another of our perfect characters ; to me, a most limited, 
uninteresting sort." He said to an American in a rough 
way, speaking of Sparks' Biography of Washington, that 
" the life of George Washington had yet to be written, 
and he would have to be taken down several pegs." He 
expected to meet Washington Irving at a breakfast in 
Paris. " I never met Washington at all," he records, 
"but still have a mild esteem of the good man." Acci- 
dentally, he says, he heard the famous Robert Hall 
preach. He thought the doctor " proved beyond shadow 
of doubt, in a really forcible, but most superfluous way, 
that God never lied." Mazzini he met, and thought " well 
nigh cracked by an enormous conceit of himself." "I 
once saw Godwin," he says, " if that was any thing." He 
speaks of " Macaulay's swaggering articles in the Edin- 



HABIT. 273 

burgh Review," and says, " Of Macaulay I hear nothing 
very good." " It seems to me of small consequence 
whether we meet at all." "Poor Hazlitt ! " he exclaims. 
" He was never admirable to me." " Of no sound cul- 
ture whatever." Heine he calls "blackguard Heine." 
" I have also seen Thomas Campbell," he says. " Him I 
like worst of all. He is heartless as a little Edinburgh 
advocate. There is a smirk on his face which would 
befit a shopman or an auctioneer. His very eye has the 
cold vivacity of a conceited worldling. His talk is small, 
contemptuous, and shallow." 

The other sex, even, he employed his great pen in dis- 
paraging. Lady William Russell, the most cherished of 
his wife's titled friends, he speaks of as " a finished piece 
of social art, but hardly otherwise much." Old Lady 
Holland he "viewed even with aversion, as a kind of 
hungry, ' ornamented witch.' " Edward Irving's sweet- 
heart — afterward Irving's wife — ■ he pronounced " never 
quite satisfactory on the side of genuineness." " She was 
very ill-looking withal ; a skin always under blotches and 
discolorment ; muddy gray eyes, which for their part 
never laughed with the other features ; pock-marked, ill- 
shapen, triangular kind of face, with hollow cheeks and 
long chin; decidedly unbeautiful as a young woman." 
" Spring-Rice's daughter, — a languishing patroness of 
mine," he refers to. Cordelia Marshall, a friend of his 
wife's, he sets down as " a prim, affectionate, but rather 
puling, weak, and sentimental elderly young lady." Mrs. 
Buller, who had been considerate of him, and whom he 
once wrote of as " one of the most fascinating women 
that I ever knew," becomes, on things going a little 
wrong, one of those " ancient dames of quality, that 
flaunting, painting, patching, nervous, vaporish, jiggling, 
scolding race of mortals." He speaks of " the honest, 
ever self-sufficient Harriet " Martineau. " Full of nigger 
fanaticisms." Her letters to his wife he calls " scrubby- 



274 CHARACTERISTICS. 

ish," "sawdustish," " Socinian didactic little notes." Of 
Mrs. Sarah Austin, who did so much to introduce the 
finest types of the German mind to the knowledge and 
appreciation of English readers, and who as a translator 
has been declared " altogether unrivaled in her own age 
and country," he takes pains to record his disparaging 
estimate : " ' Mrs. Austin,' of these days, so popular and 
almost famous, on such exiguous basis (translations from 
the German, rather poorly some, and of original nothing 
that rose far above the rank of twaddle)." 

Of Emerson he always spoke well ; and no wonder. 
There is abundant authority for the statement that for 
some years Carlyle owed even his bread to the money 
secured by Emerson for his earlier books, which were 
published in Boston before they were printed in London. 
Later, Emerson sent him seven hundred and fifty dollars, 
the profits of an American edition of his French Revo- 
lution, when the profits of the English edition, to use his 
own language, had been " absolutely nothing." 

Arago's popularity as a lecturer on astronomy was a 
result in part, it is said, of a way he had, before he com- 
menced one of his lectures, of glancing around his au- 
dience to look for some dull aspirant for knowledge, with 
a low forehead, and other indications that he was among 
the least intelligent among his hearers. He kept his eye 
fixed upon him, he addressed only him, and by the effect 
of his eloquence and powers of explanation as exhibited 
on the countenance of his pupil he judged of their influ- 
ence over the rest of his audience. When he remained 
unconvinced, the orator tried new illustrations till the 
light beamed from the grateful countenance. Arago had 
nothing to say to the rest of his audience. The orator 
and his pupil were the Siamese twins united by an intel- 
lectual ligament. One morning, when Arago was break- 
fasting with his family, a visitor was announced. A gen- 
tleman entered — his pupil of the preceding evening, — 



HABIT. 275 

who, after expressing his admiration of the lecture, thanked 
Arago for the very particular attention which he had paid 
him during its delivery. "You had the appearance," 
said he, " of giving the lecture only to me." 

In the midst of heavy professional work, Joseph Gri- 
maldi, the incomparable clown, found time and energy to 
pursue a most fatiguing hobby — the collecting of insects. 
He had formed (says a writer in Temple Bar) a cabinet 
which contained four thousand specimens. There was a 
kind which came out in the month of June, called the 
Dartford blue, for which he was particularly eager. His 
enthusiasm in this pursuit may be measured by the sacri- 
fices he made for it. After the performance was over at 
Sadler's Wells he would return home to supper, then 
about midnight start to walk to Dartford, a distance of 
fifteen miles. He would arrive there about five in the 
morning, rest and breakfast at a friend's house, then go 
out into the fields ; sometimes a search for hours would 
be rewarded with only a single specimen. At one o'clock 
he would begin his return walk to London, reach there 
in time for tea, and hurry off to the theatre. On the 
same night, after the performance, he would again walk 
to Dartford, re-commence his fly-hunt, return in the same 
manner as on the previous day, and play again, without 
rest or sleep. On the third night the pantomime was 
played first, which enabled him to quit the theatre at nine 
o'clock. Seemingly insensible to fatigue, he once more 
started on his fifteen miles walk, and this time, arriving 
at his journey's end by one in the morning, was able to 
obtain a night's rest before commencing his quest. The 
next day being Sunday, he had an opportunity of recruit- 
ing his strength, and he must have sorely needed it. 

About the only companions of the solitude of a grand 
uncle of Lord Byron was a colony of crickets, which he 
is said to have amused himself with rearing and feeding. 
Byron used to say, on the authority of old servants of the 



276 CHARACTERISTICS. 

family, that on the day of their patron's- death these 
crickets all left the house simultaneously, and in such 
numbers that it was impossible to cross the hall without 
treading on them. 

Charles Waterton, author of that attractive book, Wan- 
derings in South America, died at the age of eighty-three. 
During many years of travel in wild countries, he accus- 
tomed himself to endure every thing ; and for many years 
before his death " lived in a room at the top of his 
house, which had neither bed nor carpet ; he slept on 
the floor in a blanket, with an oak log for a pillow. He 
built a wall all round his park of two hundred and fifty 
acres, ranging from eight to sixteen feet in height, and 
modified all within to the use of birds, caring much more 
for their comfort than his own. His trees he watched 
and loved as much as his birds. It was a favorite habit 
of his to sit amongst their highest branches, watching 
birds, and reading Horace or Virgil, even after he was 
eighty ; and he often astonished visitors at the Hall by 
inviting them in perfect good faith to accompany him. 
He had himself, in his early manhood, twice climbed to 
the top of the cross on St. Peter's — once to leave his 
glove on the top of the lightning conductor, and again at 
the pope's desire (no workman in Rome being willing to 
risk his neck in the operation) to take it off again — so 
could not understand losing one's head in tree -climb- 
ing." 

There are some very curious things in Charles Math- 
ews' Memoirs about old Tate Wilkinson, the famous 
stage manager. He was, or rather had been, says the 
comedian, a great lover of good living ; his table, even 
after he was debarred any participation in its luxuries, 
was elegantly and liberally supplied, and his house the 
seat of hospitality. His appetite had long forsaken him, 
and he was very capricious in his tastes, liking to be sur- 
prised into a desire for something uncommon and unex- 



HABIT. 277 

pected. It was his custom to sprinkle about his room, 
between his papers and behind his books, some ratafia 
cakes, or any other little delicacies of the kind not liable 
to be spoiled by keeping, in order to detect them when 
he was not thinking of such a thing. Mr. Mathews more 
than once saw the effect of this contrivance — the old 
gentleman, upon the discovery, exclaiming, " Oh, here 's 
a cake ! " as if its being there was a matter of wonder to 
him ; he would then nibble it with childish avidity, after 
having resisted all his wife's attempts to invite his ap- 
petite, by proposing all sorts of delicacies. 

" There was a boy in my class at school," said Sir 
Walter Scott, " who stood always at the top, nor could I 
with all my efforts supplant him. Day came after day, 
and still he alwa\ s kept the place, do what I could ; till 
at length I observed that when a question was answered 
he always fumbled with his fingers at a particular button 
on the lower part of his waistcoat. To remove it, there- 
fore, became expedient in my eyes ; and, in an evil hour, 
it was removed with a knife. When the boy was again 
questioned, he felt again for the button, but it was not to 
be found. In his distress he looked down for it ; it was 
to be seen no more than to be felt. He stood confounded, 
and I took possession of his place ; nor did he ever re- 
cover it, nor ever, I believe, suspect who was the author 
of his wrong. Often, in after life, has the sight of him 
smote me as I passed by him, and often have I resolved 
to make him some reparation, but it ended in good reso- 
lutions. Though I never renewed my acquaintance with 
him, I often saw him, for he filled some inferior office 
in one of the courts of law at Edinburgh. Poor fellow : 
I believe he is dead ; he took early to drinking." 

" In the beginning of my translating the Iliad," said 
Pope to Spence, " I wished any body would hang me, a 
hundred times. It sat so heavily on my mind at first, 
that I often used to dream of it, and do sometimes still. 



278 CHARACTERISTICS. 

When I fell into the method of translating thirty or forty 
verses before I got up, and piddled with it the rest of 
the morning, it went on easy enough ; and when I was 
thoroughly got into the way of it, I did the rest with 
pleasure." 

Thoreau, in his Walden, discoursing of habitual and 
constitutional vices, speaks of some Spanish hides he 
had seen, with the tails still preserving their twist and 
the angle of elevation they had when the oxen that wore 
them were careering over the pampas of the Spanish 
main, — a type of all obstinacy, and evincing how almost 
hopeless and incurable are all such vices. " I confess," 
he says, " that practically speaking, when I have learned 
a man's real disposition, I have no hopes of changing it 
for the better or worse in this state of existence. As the 
Orientals say, ' a cur's tail may be warmed, and pressed, 
and bound round with ligatures, and after a twelve years' 
labor bestowed upon it, still it will retain its natural 
form.' " 

One cannot bear, said Lamb, to pay for articles he 
has been in the habit of getting for nothing. "When 
Adam laid out his first penny upon nonpareils at some 
stall in Mesopotamia, I think it went hard with him, re- 
flecting upon his old goodly orchard, where he had so 
many for nothing." 

Southey's anecdote of Master Jackson illustrates, and 
to some extent accounts for, an easy habit that good peo- 
ple sometimes fall into, that is much complained of by 
the parsons. " Well, Master Jackson," said his minis- 
ter, walking homeward after service, with an industrious 
laborer, who was a constant attendant, — " well, Master 
Jackson, Sunday must be a blessed day of rest for you, 
who work hard all the week. And you make good use of 
the day; for you are always to be seen at church." "Aye, 
sir," replied Jackson, " it is, indeed, a blessed day ; I 
works hard enough all the week ; and then I comes to 



HABIT. 279 

church o' Sundays, and sets me down, and lays my legs 
up, and thinks o' nothing." 

The effect of habit in self-discipline is shown in an in- 
teresting chapter from Goethe's Autobiography. " My 
health," says the poet, " was tolerably good; but a nerv- 
ous irritability rendered me unable to endure the noise 
and sight of infirmities and sufferings. I could not stand 
on an elevation and look downwards without feeling a 
vertigo. I accustomed myself to noise by taking my sta- 
tion, at night, near the trumpets that sounded the retreat, 
at the risk of having my tympanum cracked by their loud 
braying. To cure myself of giddiness, I often ascended 
to the top of the Minster tower alone. I used to remain 
a quarter of an hour sitting on the stairs before I durst 
venture out. I then advanced on a small platform, 
scarcely an ell square, without any rail or support. Be- 
fore me was an immense extent of country, whilst the 
objects nearest to the Minster concealed from my sight 
the church and the monument on which I was perched. 
I was precisely in the situation of a man launched into 
mid-air in a balloon. I repeated the experiment of this 
painful situation, until at length it gave me no sensation 
at all. Of the utility of these trials I was afterward fully 
sensible, when the study of geology led me to traverse 
mountains. When I had to visit great buildings, I could 
stand with the workmen upon the scaffolds on the roofs. 
These habits were no less useful to me at Rome, where 
I wished to examine the celebrated monuments of that 
city closely. In studying anatomy, I learned to endure 
the sight of those objects which at first shocked me most. 
I attended a course of clinical lectures, with the twofold 
intention of gaining an increase of knowledge, and of 
freeing myself of all pusillanimous repugnance. On the 
whole, I succeeded in fortifying myself against all those 
impressions of the senses and imagination which disturb 
the tranquillity of the soul." 



280 CHARACTERISTICS. 

Although Haller surpassed his contemporaries in 
anatomy, and published several important anatomical 
works, he was troubled at the outset with a horror of dis- 
section beyond what is usual with the inexperienced, and 
it was only, it is stated, by firm discipline that he became 
an anatomist at all. 

" Habit, in the great majority of things," says the grave 
and reverend John Foster, " is a greater plague than ever 
afflicted Egypt ; in religious character, it is a grand felic- 
ity. The devout man exults in the indications of his 
being fixed and irretrievable. He feels this confirmed 
habit as the grasp of the hand of God, which will never 
let him go. From this advanced state he looks with firm- 
ness and joy on futurity, and says, I carry the eternal 
mark upon me that I belong to God ; I am free of the 
universe ; and I am ready to go to any world to which 
He shall please to transmit me, certain that everywhere, 
in height or depth, He will acknowledge me forever." 



XI. 

THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 

" Yes j but " — These two little words, in this close 
connection — divided only by a semicolon — represent, in 
essence, it must be admitted, a very large part of all the 
conversation of all mankind. We assent, with qualifica- 
tion ; and the qualification, unhappily, too often ends the 
discussion. The shadows finish the picture. The habit 
we all deplore, and nearly all possess. Disparagement, 
detraction, — call it what you may, — that we are quick 
to condemn in others, we are very slow to correct in our- 
selves. We see it, we talk about it, we despise it, we 
blush at it, albeit we persist in it. The mischief goes 
for nothing, in effect, and we seem to look upon it as a 
part of life, inevitable and indispensable, to be condemned 
or indulged, as it disagrees or accords with our feelings 
or interests. Nature — human nature in this instance — 
goes her own way, and man is not to be made over in 
haste ; therefore, as a study, merely, this article is in- 
tended, without the slightest conception of reforming vio- 
lently any human being. The Tigris flows through Bag- 
dad when the caliphs are all dead. 

" God," says Heine, " has given us tongues, that we 
may say pleasant things to our friends, and bitter truths 
of our enemies." "I have," he says, "the most peacea- 
ble disposition. My desires are a modest cottage with 
thatched roof — but a good bed, good fare, fresh milk 
and butter, flowers by my window, and a few fine trees 
before the door. And if the Lord wished to fill my cup 
of happiness, he would grant me the pleasure of seeing 



282 CHARACTERISTICS. 

some six or seven of my enemies hanged on those trees. 
With a heart moved to pity, I would, before their death, 
forgive the injury they had done me during their lives. 
Yes, we ought to forgive our enemies — but not until 
they are hanged." "As far as I can understand the 'lov- 
ing our enemies,'" said Poe, "it implies the hating our 
friends." When Marshal Narvaez was on his death-bed, 
his confessor asked him if he freely forgave all his ene- 
mies. " I have no enemies," replied the dying marshal, 
proudly. " Every one must have made enemies in the 
course of his life," suggested the priest, mildly. " Oh, 
of course," replied the marshal ; " I have had a great 
number of enemies in my time, but I have none now. I 
have had them all shot !" You recollect the surgeon, to 
whom Voltaire was once compared, who not only attended 
a friend carefully during a last illness, but dissected him. 
You remember also the New Zealander who was asked 
whether he loved a missionary who had been laboring 
for his soul and those of his countrymen. " To be sure 
I loved him. Why, I ate a piece of him for my breakfast 
this morning ! " 

" If we quarreled," says Thackeray, " with all the peo- 
ple who abuse us behind our backs, and began to tear 
their eyes out as soon as we set ours on them, what a 
life it would be, and when should we have any quiet? 
Backbiting is all fair in society. Abuse me, and I will 
abuse you ; but let us be friends when we meet. Have 
we not all entered a dozen rooms, and been sure, from 
the countenances of the amiable persons present, that 
they had been discussing our little peculiarities, perhaps 
as we were on the stairs ? Was our visit, therefore, the 
less agreeable ? Did we quarrel and say hard words to 
one another's faces? No — we wait until some of our 
dear friends take their leave, and then comes our turn. 
My back is at my neighbor's service ; as soon as that is 
turned let him make what faces he thinks proper : but 



THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 283 

when we meet we grin and shake hands like well-bred 
folk, to whom clean linen is not more necessary than a 
clean, sweet-looking countenance, and a nicely gotten up 
smile for company." 

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu said of the Duchess of 
Marlborough, " We continue to see one another like two 
persons who are resolved to hate with civility." Madame 
de Maintenon and Madame de Montespan met in public, 
talked with vivacity, and, to those who judged only by 
appearances, seemed excellent friends. Once when they 
had to make a journey in the same carriage, Madame de 
Montespan said, " Let us talk as if there were no differ- 
ence between us, but on condition that we resume our 
hostility when we return." 

The delightful deference which society obliges us to 
pay to those who hate us, is very much like returning 
thanks for injuries — a refinement in tyranny frequently 
practiced by the worst of the Roman emperors. Seneca 
informs us that Caligula was thanked by those whose 
children had been put to death, and whose property had 
been confiscated. A person who had grown old in his 
attendance on kings, was asked how he had attained a 
thing so uncommon in courts as old age ? It was, replied 
he, by receiving injuries and returning thanks. It was 
on the same principle, we suppose, that Louis Philippe, 
unlike the great Napoleon, saw all the malicious carica- 
tures that were made of himself, and laughed at them 
lustily. The young Prince Imperial, alluding to the visit 
of Count Bismarck to Napoleon III. at Plombieres, said, 
" They let me laugh as much as I like ; but what I don't 
like is to be obliged to smile and look pleasant to men 
who I know are my father's enemies." 

We are all sore, deficient, and vulnerable ; and by crit- 
icism, ridicule, and detraction, we supply ourselves with 
emollients, compensations, and weapons. Man, too, being 
a laughing animal, soon finds that the most laughable 



284 CHARACTERISTICS. 

object in creation is himself. He is continually blunder- 
ing and stumbling, and he only learns to keep his feet 
by falling. Morally as well as physically. If an invis- 
ible knocking machine tapped each one of us on the 
head the instant and every time we thought evil or did 
wrong, what a getting up there would be ! What a scene 
the street would present ! To the church or to the mar- 
ket, the same. Verily, the world laughs ; — with us, and 
then at us. 

Johnson uttered a conspicuously generous thing of his 
friend Sir Joshua, when he said, " Reynolds, sir, is the 
most invulnerable man I know; the man with whom, if you 
should quarrel, you would find the most difficulty how to 
abuse." " In faults," said Goethe, "men are much alike; 
in good qualities they differ." We readily perceive the 
faults of others by being so familiar with our own. Their 
virtues are not so visible to us, for the reason that our 
own are not so distinct to ourselves. The real good that 
is in us is unconscious, almost occult, and blushes when 
it is discovered. 

It is only the very few, we hope, who, by what Haw- 
thorne calls the " alchemy of quiet malice," concoct a 
subtle poison from the ordinary experiences of life. For 
the fun of the thing, more than for the mischief of it, the 
world prattles on. Sometimes it is cruel ; but it is the 
cruelty of the thoughtless boy. It does not much con- 
cern itself about justice or injustice. To the sources it 
does not much care to go if it could. It prefers to see 
with its eyes rather than with its head, — by its senses 
rather than by its reason. It sees outwardly, and talks 
for recreation — irresponsibly, generally, and without re- 
flection. "As for good sense," said Gil Bias, "if an angel 
from heaven were to whisper wisdom in one ear, and 
your cousin her mortal chit-chat in the other, I am afraid 
the angel might w : histle for an audience." 

Boswell was thought by some of his contemporaries 



THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 285 

to be a little dangerous; but for his love of personali- 
ties the world would not have had its best biography. 
Wiser men than himself hated and feared him. " A 
snapper up of unconsidered trifles," he might victimize 
them. They did not know that the wise eye of Johnson 
revised all that he recorded. It is said that whenever 
he came into a company where Horace Walpole was, Wal- 
pole would throw back his head, purse up his mouth very 
significantly, and not speak a word while Boswell re- 
mained. 

Thiers' father is described as a queer, bustling, talka- 
tive little gentleman, and it is suggested that there must 
have been something mischievous in his talk, or so much 
pains would not have been taken by his eminent son to 
keep him from his wedding. To insure the non-appear- 
ance of his troublesome parent at the wedding, the minis- 
ter for three weeks previously hired all the places in the 
stage-coaches running from Carpentras (where he lived) 
and other towns of the Vaucluse to Lyons. 

Is it true, as they say, that it is the bad-tempered 
people who are most apt to take to themselves and mis- 
construe whatever is loosely said by the tongue of the 
world, as the wasp is said to take up and convert all it 
can light upon into poison ? The illusory fancies of bad- 
tempered people have been made the subject of much 
subtle observation and analysis by mental physiologists. 
It has been observed that they honestly believe that they 
are the most ill-used persons on the earth, when they are 
surrounded only by kindly regard and forbearing indul- 
gence. They honestly believe that all the world is devot- 
ing itself exclusively to a discussion of them, when, it 
may be, the world, if it thinks or speaks of them at all, 
it is only in a general way, and for the general good. 
An English judge once sentenced a prisoner : " I sen- 
tence you," he said, " to die ; not at all because you 
have '•robbed this house, but in order that other people 



286 CHARACTERISTICS. 

may not rob other houses in future." The tongue is 
the universal policeman. It sometimes makes mistakes, 
and sometimes it is cruel. Good-nature is expected to 
forgive and submit Virtue is its own reward. 

It must be that a good deal of the evil-speaking of the 
world is for emphasis or for' self-relief. Longinus, in his 
Discourse of the Sublime, commends swearing, for the 
reason that, now and then, on proper occasions, it adds 
to the grandeur and effectiveness of oratory. Old Fuseli, 
the painter, once said to his wife, when he found her in 
a tempestuous temper, " Madam, do swear a little \ you 
do not know how much good it would do you." 

Can it be possible that a pretty general abuse of one's 
acquaintances was ever intended to limit one's friends ? 
as Lady Chantrey went into the studio with a hammer, 
and knocked off the noses of many completed busts, so 
that they might not be too common — a singular atten- 
tion, it was thought, to her departed husband. 

Intentionally or not, many a one's friends have been 
wofully reduced by the process of general offense. And 
the dear five hundred could not be recovered, when lost 
in that sweeping and unreasonable way. The offender 
and the offense had made it impossible. " Since I 
wronged you, I have never liked you," is a proverb. 
" The offender never pardons," is another. " No prov- 
erb is absolutely true," says a writer upon this subject; 
" but all experience of life shows that it is the one 
who gives the offense, with whom it is the most difficult 
to make up. The reason is obvious. The offending man 
is secretly very angry with himself, and he has to forgive 
both you and himself — himself for having been unreas- 
onable, and you for having been in the way when he was 
unreasonable." 

You remember Wycherley's humorous excuse for de- 
traction in The Plain Dealer : " Speaking well of all 
mankind is the worst kind of detraction ; for it takes 



THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 287 

away the reputation of the few good men in the world by 
making all alike." Suggesting Swift's satirical allusion 
to lying. He said that universal as was the practice of 
lying, and easy as it seemed, he did not remember to have 
heard three good lies in all his life. 

A favorite amusement of boys is in marking out letters 
on signboards and in handbills — to produce what may 
be called wit by obliteration. A like effort it would seem 
is sometimes made to rub away traits of character, and 
laugh over the result of the prodigious performance. If 
such puerile wit sometimes resulted as the boys' experi- 
ence with Professor John Stuart Blackie, there would per- 
haps be less of it. For thirty-five years he occupied the 
Greek chair of the University of Edinburgh. Once, we 
are told, on the first day of the college year he posted on 
the class-room door a notice that Professor Blackie would 
meet his classes on the 4th instant at the usual hours. A 
joker among the students erased the " c " in " classes," 
thus announcing that the Professor would " meet his 
lasses," etc. As class time drew near the young men 
gathered about to " see what Blackie would do." The 
Professor came, glanced at the card, touched it with a 
pencil, and passed in to his desk, with a grim smile over- 
spreading his features. And the students followed him 
into the room, with mingled emotions of jollity and dis- 
may, as they saw that his pencil stroke had obliterated 
the " 1." Recalling an incident they tell of the eminent 
Dr. Whewell, who was a living cyclopaedia. On one occa- 
sion some of his companions formed a conspiracy to trap 
him. A number of them read up on Chinese music from 
articles in old reviews. Then when they were ready they 
fired off their recondite knowledge on the state of mu- 
sic in China. For a while Dr. Whewell remained si- 
lent, and the conspirators were happy in thinking they 
had caught the great scholar at last. When, however, 
they had about emptied themselves of their curious lore, 



288 CHARACTERISTICS. 

he remarked, " I was imperfectly, and to some extent in- 
correctly, informed regarding Chinese music when I wrote 
the articles from which you have drawn your informa- 
tion." 

" I do not wonder," said Macaulay, " at the violence 
of the hatred which Socrates had provoked. He had, 
evidently, a thorough love for making men look small. 
There was a meek maliciousness about him which gave 
wounds such as must have smarted long, and his com- 
mand of temper was more provoking than noisy triumph 
and insolence would have been." 

The man who delights in giving you full credit for 
every excellence you possess, rather than in belittling you 
by an exaggeration of your foibles, is a treasure ; and the 
protection you feel in the neighborhood of such a man, 
law could not give you. He shuts your gate, he protects 
your child, he guards your reputation ; he does the fair 
and generous thing. If men were weighed and not 
counted, such a man would overbalance many of poorer 
material. Themistocles, having a farm to sell, bid the 
crier proclaim also that it had a good neighbor. 

" Every one knows," says Goethe, " that there is no 
readier way to get rid of the consciousness of our own 
faults, than to busy ourselves about those of other people. 
This is a method much in vogue in the best of company. 
But nothing gives us so strong a sense of our independ- 
ence, or makes us so important in our own eyes, as the 
censure of our superiors and of the great in this world." 
" If we were faultless," says Fenelon, " we should not be 
so much annoyed by the defects of those with whom we 
associate. If we were to acknowledge honestly that we 
have not virtue enough to bear patiently with our neigh- 
bors' weaknesses, we should show our own imperfection, 
.and this alarms our vanity. We therefore make our 
weakness pass for strength, elevate it to a virtue and call 
it zeal ; an imaginary and often hypocritical zeal. For is 



THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 289 

it not surprising to see how tranquil we are about the 
errors of others when they do not trouble us, and how 
soon this wonderful zeal kindles against those who excite 
our jealousy, or weary our patience ? " " We reprove our 
friends' faults," said Wycherley, " rnore out of pride than 
love or charity ; not so much to correct them as to make 
them believe we are ourselves without them." 

" It is a very ordinary and common thing amongst 
men," says Rabelais, in his quaint way, " to conceive, fore- 
see, know, and presage the misfortunes, bad luck, or dis- 
aster of another ; but to have the understanding, provi- 
dence, knowledge, and prediction of a man's own mishaps, 
is very scarce, and rare to be found anywhere. This is 
exceeding judiciously and prudently deciphered by iEsop 
in his apologues, who there afhrmeth, that every man in 
the world carrieth about his neck a wallet, in the forebag 
whereof is contained the faults and mischances of others, 
always exposed to his view and knowledge ; and in the 
other scrip thereof, which hangs behind, is kept the bear- 
er's proper transgressions, and inauspicious adventures, 
at no time seen by him, nor thought upon, unless he be a 
person that hath a favorable aspect from the heavens." 

" It is a certain sign of an ill heart," says Steele, in one 
of his Spectators, " to be inclined to defamation. They 
who are harmless and innocent can have no gratification 
that way ; but it ever arises from a neglect of what is 
laudable in a man's self, and an impatience in seeing it in 
another. ... A lady the other day at a visit, being at- 
tacked somewhat rudely by one whose own character had 
been very rudely treated, answered a great deal of heat 
and intemperance by very calmly remarking, 'Good 
madam, spare me, who am none of your match ; I speak 
ill of nobody, and it is a new thing to me to be spoken 
ill of.' " 

One evening at a convivial gathering in Paris, where all 
the guests did not happen to be of the same political 
19 



29O CHARACTERISTICS. 

opinions, as they sat down to dinner, one said to the com- 
pany : " Gentlemen, I should, before we begin dinner, 
make a little explanation of one of my peculiarities. It 
sometimes happens that when I have a little wine on 
board I take it into my head to gibe people who are not 
of my way of thinking in politics. I assure you that I 
mean nothing serious by such an action, and that if I 
should appear to be rude you will make a little allowance 
and not lay it to my account." As he seated himself, 
another guest, a man seven feet high, and with a hand 
and an arm in proportion, arose and said as courteously : 
" Gentlemen, I too should make a little explanation of 
one of my peculiarities. It sometimes happens that when 
I have a little wine on board and some one begins to gibe 
me for my way of thinking in politics I take it into my 
head to wring his neck or pitch him out of a second story 
window. I assure you that I mean nothing serious by 
such an action, and that if I should appear to be rude 
you will make a little allowance, and not lay it to my ac- 
count." Not a word of politics was spoken at the table 
that evening, and all went merry as a dinner should. 

A young lady, a member of Dr. Lathrop's church, went 
on a visit to a neighboring town, and while there attended 
a party and danced. Tidings of her sin reached home 
before her. On her return she was visited and called to 
most severe account for the disgrace she had thus 
brought upon herself and upon the church, and which had 
been found out, notwithstanding it had been done among 
strangers. One staid maiden was especially severe in her 
rebukes, and made the poor girl feel very bad. " What 
shall I do ? " she asked. " You had better go and see 
Dr. Lathrop." She did go, and told him all about it. 
" And so, my dear, you went to the party, and danced, 
did you ? " he said. " Yes, sir." " And did you have a 
good time ? " " Yes, sir." " Well, I am glad of it, and I 
hope you will go again, and enjoy yourself. And now I 



THE HABIT OF DETRACTION 29 1 

want you to tell me the name of the woman who has been 
making you all this trouble." She told him. " Go to 
that woman, and tell her from me that, if she wants to 
get to heaven, she had better make more use of her feet, 
and less of her tongue." 

People, it has been very truly remarked, are ever on 
the watch to catch their fellows tripping • it is such com- 
fort to find, or to fancy, one's self better than one's neigh- 
bors • and the more favored by fortune the delinquent is, 
the sweeter is the pharisaical consolation we extract out 
of his aberrations. 

Our own defects are apt to make us extremely acute in 
discovering the defects of others, as an infirmity some- 
times seems to supply a new sense. Not long since there 
was living in the county of York, England, a gentleman, 
who, though totally blind, was an expert archer. His 
sense of hearing was so keen, that when a boy behind 
the target rang a bell, the blind archer knew precisely 
how to aim the shaft. 

Once on a time a woman at confession told the priest 
that she had been guilty of slandering her neighbor. The 
priest gave her a thistle, and told her to go and scatter it 
on the fields, and then come back. On her return, the 
priest said, "Go now and gather up all those thistle- 
seeds." When she declared she could not, he said to 
her, " Neither can you gather up the evil words you have 
spoken." 

Some one has said that those who utter slander, and 
those who believe it, ought both to be hanged, one by 
the tongue, the other by the ear. 

In the land of Satin, Rabelais saw Hearsay, " a dimin- 
utive, monstrous, misshapen old fellow," who " kept a 
school of vouching." " His mouth was slit up to his 
ears, and in it were seven tongues, each of them cleft 
into seven parts. However, he chattered, tattled, and 
prated with all the seven at once, of different matters, 



292 CHARACTERISTICS. 

and in divers languages. He had as many ears all over 
his head, and the rest of his body, as Argus formerly had 
eyes ; and was as blind as a beetle, and had the palsy in his 
legs. About him stood an innumerable number of men 
and women, gaping, listening, and hearing very intently ; 
among them he observed some who strutted like crows in 
a gutter, and principally a very handsome bodied man in 
the face, who held them a map of the world, and with 
little aphorisms compendiously explained every thing to 
them ; so that those men of happy memories grew learned 
in a trice, and would most fluently talk with you of a world 
of prodigious things, the hundredth part of which would 
take up a man's whole life to be fully known." 

It has been noticed in Abyssinia that an irreconcilable 
feud rages between the donkey and the hyena. " I have 
met with my moral antipodes," says Lamb, " and can be- 
lieve the story of two persons meeting (who never saw 
one another before in their lives) and instantly fighting." 
Upon one occasion Mr. Webster was on his way to at- 
tend to his duties in Washington. He was compelled to 
proceed at night by stage from Baltimore. He had no 
traveling companions, and the driver had a sort of felon- 
look, which produced no inconsiderable alarm. " I en- 
deavored to tranquilize myself," said Mr. Webster, " and 
had partially succeeded, when we reached the woods be- 
tween Bladensburg and Washington (a proper scene for 
murder or outrage), and here, I confess, my courage 
again deserted me. Just then the driver, turning to me, 
with a gruff voice asked my name. I gave it to him. 
' Where are you going ? ' said he. The reply was, ' To 
Washington. I am a Senator.' Upon this, the driver 
seized me fervently by the hand, and exclaimed, ' How 
glad I am. I have been trembling in my seat for the last 
. hour ; for, when I looked at you, I took you to be a high- 
wayman.' " 

Shelley somehow antagonized his neighbors ; at least, 



THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 293 

he was always misunderstood by them and belied. He 
was said to be keeping a seraglio at Marlovv ; and his 
friends partook of the scandal. This keeper of a serag- 
lio, who, in fact, was extremely difficult to please in such 
matters, and who had no idea of love unconnected with 
sentiment, passed his clays like a hermit. We have it 
upon the authority of his friend Leigh Hunt that he rose 
early in the morning, walked and read before breakfast, 
took that meal sparingly, wrote and studied the greater 
part of the morning, walked and read again, dined on 
vegetables (for he took neither meat nor wine), conversed 
with his friends (to whom his house was ever open), again 
walked out, and usually finished with reading to his wife 
till ten o'clock, when he went to bed. This was his daily 
existence. Yet the word " seraglio " stuck to his home 
like an epithet ; and you know what an epithet is. " It 
is by epithets," said Napoleon, " that you govern man- 
kind." 

A gentleman gave Thackeray a good illustration of the 

philosophy of exaggeration. Mr. was once behind 

the scenes at the opera when the scene-shifters were pre- 
paring for the ballet. Flora was to sleep under a bush, 
whereon were growing a number of roses, and amidst 
which was fluttering a gay covey of butterflies. In size, 
the roses exceeded the most expansive sunflowers ; and 
the butterflies were as large as cocked hats. The scene- 
shifters explained to Mr. , who asked the reason why 

every thing was so magnified, that the galleries could 
never see the objects unless they were enormously exag- 
gerated. Thus pitched to their senses and apprehension, 
they were vehement in their applauses, and the spectacle 
was triumphant. Healthy criticism and sound judgment 
were impossible, as they always are to the excited multi- 
tude. Froude, in his sketch of Julius Cassar, speaks of 
a yell which rose from tens of thousands of throats so 
piercing that it was said a crow flying over the Forum 



294 CHARACTERISTICS. 

dropped dead at the sound of it. The Duke of Welling- 
ton would not allow the fence around his house, which 
had been torn down by the excited mob, to be rebuilt, 
because he wanted kept before him the mutability, uncer- 
tainty, and unreasonableness of all popular favor. 

It is impossible to overestimate the influence of sur- 
rounding atmospheres, physical and social. Sir Ruther- 
ford Alcock, who once represented Great Britain in 
China, visited the Great Wall, and brought back two 
bricks from it. " I do not pretend to determine," says 
Helps, in his chapter on Social Pressure, " how many 
centuries these bricks had kept their form, and- betrayed 
no signs of decay, in that atmosphere. But those centu- 
ries must have been many. Sir Rutherford put these two 
bricks out in the balcony of his house in London. About 
two years after, one of these bricks had entirely gone to 
pieces, being entirely disintegrated by the corrosive influ- 
ence of the London atmosphere." " In Syria, and Pal- 
estine, and Egypt," says Kinglake, "you might as well 
dispute the efficacy of grass or grain as of magic. There 
is no controversy about the matter. The effect of this, 
the unanimous belief of an ignorant people, upon the 
mind of a stranger, is extremely curious, and well worth 
noticing. A man coming freshly from Europe is at first 
proof against the nonsense with which he is assailed, but 
often it happens that after a little while the social atmos- 
phere in which he lives will begin to infect him, and if he 
has been unaccustomed to the cunning of fence by which 
Reason prepares the means of guarding herself against 
fallacy, he will yield himself at last to the faith of those 
around him, and this he will do by sympathy, it would 
seem, rather than from conviction." 

Johnson, in his Preface to Shakespeare, says : " The 
great contention of criticism is to find the faults of the 
moderns, and the beauties of the ancients. While an 
author is yet living, we estimate his powers by his worst 



THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 295 

performance, and when he is dead, we rate them by the 
best." Lord Brougham conceived the brilliant idea of 
giving out that he had been killed in a carriage accident, 
to see what the newspapers would say of him. Several 
pages are devoted to this curious bit of history by Camp- 
bell in his Lives of the Lord Chancellors. " Whether 
Brougham was cognizant of this piece of bad pleasantry 
or not," says Lord Campbell, " he was much annoyed by 
the result of it. Not only was he mortified by the great 
preponderance of abuse which it called forth, but he dis- 
covered, to his great surprise, that he was generally sus- 
pected to be the author of it, and he knew the ridicule 
which he must have incurred by killing himself, and read- 
ing so many, and such unfavorable characters of himself, 
written when he was supposed to have gone to a better 
world." 

Mr. Greeley used to tell a good story of the way Amer- 
ican fabrics were once disparaged in New York city. Dr. 
Crosby, of New Haven, had invented an ingenious ma- 
chine for the manufacture of fish-hooks, by means of 
which a coil of wire would be converted into a peck of 
fish-hooks of any size with astonishing rapidity and per- 
fect success. It bent, pointed, barbed, and flattened the 
heads at lightning speed, and more beautifully than could 
be done by hand manipulation. Having finished a quan- 
tity he sent them down to New York. They were rejected 
as not of standard excellence. He sent another lot, which 
was also rejected for the same reason. He then sent 
down a third lot of hooks put on cards as usual, and said 
he felt sure that these would answer. The reply came, 
No, they would not do ; they were not up to the British 
make. Dr. Crosby then wrote down indignantly to the 
New York house : " Why, gentlemen, these ought to suit 
you, for they are British hooks bought from your own 
store, and packed in my boxes to test you." That, how- 
ever, did not signify, and the American hooks were still 
disparaged and refused. 



296 CHARACTERISTICS. 

Stanley, when voyaging down the Congo, had this sig- 
nificant experience : " I saw before me over a hundred 
beings of the most degraded, unpresentable type it is 
possible to conceive ; and though I knew quite well 
that some hundreds of years ago the beginning of this 
wretched humanity and myself were one and the same, 
a sneaking disinclination to believe it possessed me 
strongly, and I would even now willingly subscribe some 
small amount of silver money for him who could but as- 
sist me to controvert the discreditable fact. ... If the 
old chief appeared so unprepossessing, how can I paint 
without offense my humble brothers and sisters who stood 
around us ? As I looked at the array of faces, I could 
only comment to myself, — ugly, uglier, ugliest. As I 
looked at their rude and filthy bodies, . . . and the 
general indecency of their nakedness, I ejaculated ' Fear- 
ful ! ' as the sum total of what I might with propriety say, 
and what indeed is sufficiently descriptive. . . . And 
how strangely they smell, all these queer man-like crea- 
tures who stand regarding me ! Not silently : on the 
contrary, there is a loud interchange of comments upon 
the white's appearance, a manifestation of broad interest 
to know whence I came, whither I am going, and what is 
my business. The replies were followed by long-drawn 
ejaculations of ' Wa-a-a-antu ! ' (' Men ! ') ' Eha-a, and 
these are men ! ' Now imagine this ! While we whites 
are loftily disputing among ourselves as to whether the 
beings before us are human, here were these creatures 
actually expressing strong doubts as to whether we 
whites are men ! A dead silence prevailed for a short 
time, during which all the females dropped their lower 
jaws far down, and then cried out again, ' Wa-a-a-a-a- 
antu!' ('Men!')" 

A charitable old woman, who afforded Mungo Park a 
meal and lodging, on the banks of the Niger, could not 
refrain, even in the midst of her kindness, from exclaim- 



THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 297 

ing, " God preserve us from the devil," as she looked 
upon him. 

It has been said that we must have the same enmities 
to be united in spirit. That in order to love one another, 
we must have hatreds in common. Literature, at least, 
furnishes some proofs of this. We know, for instance, 
how, on account of the satire of Fielding, the moral Rich- 
ardson and the dissolute Cibber became lasting friends. 
" If the Athenians were wise (Aristides is reported to 
have said, in the height and peril of his parliamentary 
struggle with Themistocles), they would have cast both 
Themistocles and me into the barathrum." (The bara- 
thrum was a deep pit, said to have had iron spikes at 
the bottom, into which criminals condemned to death 
were sometimes cast.) The rulers, in Heine's time, re- 
fused a residence in Prussia, and especially in Berlin, to 
any one who did not profess one of the positive religions 
recognized by the state. Tacitus, in speaking of the 
Germans eighteen centuries ago, says it was an indis- 
pensable duty to adopt the enmities of a father or rela- 
tion, as well as their friendships. Maryde Medici, mother 
of Louis XIII., was extremely anxious to obtain the good 
graces of her son. One day she asked the prince of 
Piedmont, her son-in-law, " How shall I set about ob- 
taining them ? " The prince replied, " Love truly and 
sincerely all that he loves ; these words contain the law 
and the prophets." 

Still, according to Holmes, " Whenever two natures 
have a great deal in common, the conditions of a first-rate 
quarrel are furnished ready-made. Relations are very 
apt to hate each other just because they are too much 
alike. It is so frightful to be in an atmosphere of family 
idiosyncrasies ; to see all the hereditary uncomeliness or 
infirmity of body, all the defects of speech, all the failings 
of temper, intensified by concentration, so that every fault 
of our own finds itself multiplied by reflections, like an 



298 CHARACTERISTICS. 

image in a saloon lined with mirrors ! Nature knows what 
she is about. The centrifugal principle which grows out 
of the antipathy of like to like is only the repetition in 
character of the arrangement we see expressed materially 
in certain seed-capsules, which burst and throw the seed 
to all points of the compass. A house is a large pod with 
a human germ or two in each of its cells or chambers : it 
opens by dehiscence of the front door by and by, and pro- 
jects one of its germs to Kansas, another to San Fran- 
cisco, another to Chicago, and so on ; and this that Smith 
may not be Smithed to death, and Brown may not be 
Browned into a mad-house, but mix in with the world 
again and struggle back to average humanity." 

Charles Young made his de'but at the Haymarket on 
the 22d of June, 1807, as Hamlet. It was an undoubted 
success. But from one corner of the theatre, it is said, 
came a persistent hiss. Young soon succeeded in detect- 
ing the malevolent person, and recognized in him his own 
father ! It was not the first time this excellent gentleman 
had given public proof of animosity against his children. 
Once he entered a stage-coach in which one of his sons 
(who afterward attained some eminence as a surgeon) 
was sitting, and without speaking a word struck him a 
heavy blow in the face. The young man ordered the 
coach to stop, and as he alighted turned to the astonished 
passengers and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is my 
father!" 

Douglas Jerrold has said, " Fishermen in order to 
handle eels securely, first cover them with dirt. In like 
manner does detraction strive to grasp excellence." Le 
Sage has said as well : " Evil tongues never want a whet. 
Virtue herself furnishes weapons for her own martyr- 
dom." 

" Observe," says La Bruyere, " those persons who never 
commend any one, who are always railing, are content 
with nobody, and you will find them persons with whom 



THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 299 

nobody is content." And they are not apt to be content 
with themselves, " How happy one would be," exclaims 
Madame du Deffand, " if one could throw off one's self as 
one can throw off others ! but one is perforce with one's 
self, and very little in accord with one's self." 

" He who will work aright," said Goethe to Eckermann, 
" must never rail, must not trouble himself at all about 
what is ill-done, but only to do well himself. For the 
great point is, not to pull down, but to build up, and in 
this humanity finds pure joy." " The man most eager to 
pull another down is the person who wants to get into his 
place. The democrat is merely a despot in disguise." 

It is said that in Norway there is a superstition that if 
you save a man from drowning, he will serve you an ill 
turn, one day or another. Bourrienne said of Foucbe, 
Napoleon's minister of police, that he never regarded a 
benefit in any other light than as a means of injuring his 
benefactor. That bitterest of all satirists, Talleyrand, 
being told that a certain public functionary was talking 
against him, exclaimed, " That surprises me. I have never 
done him a favor." " I never laughed more," said Voltaire 
to Casanova, " than when I read that Don Quixote found 
himself in the greatest perplexity how he should defend 
himself against the galley-slaves, whom, out of generosity, 
he had liberated." 

That is good advice given by Hazlitt, " Never quarrel 
with tried friends, or those whom you wish to continue 
such. Wounds of this kind are sure to open again. 
When once the prejudice is removed that sheathes de- 
fects, familiarity only causes jealousy and distrust. Do 
not keep on with a mockery of friendship after the sub- 
stance is gone — but part, while you can part friends. 
Bury the carcass of friendship : it is not worth embalm- 
ing." 

False friendship is not to be spoken of. Figured down 
to good federal money, about twenty-two dollars was the 
sum Judas received for betraying his Master. 



3<DO CHARACTERISTICS. 

"If 'what we see is doubtful, how can we believe what 
is spoken behind the back ? " is a Chinese proverb. 
"Why did you say such things behind Mr. Johnson's 
back ? " " Because," was the reply, " I would not hurt 
his feelings by saying them to his face." Alas, the cour- 
age it requires to defend the absent. 

It is so easy to be mistaken. Eugene Sue was a boon 
companion of the French novelist Fromieu. The two, we 
are told, had one evening dined at the Cafe de Paris, and 
by reason of too generous after-dinner potations, their 
gayety, on issuing from the famous restaurant, was of a 
highly pronounced type. At once Fromieu made a false 
step, and falling, sprained his ankle. Sue, who in his 
youth had pursued a long course of medical studies, in- 
stantly lost his hilarity, hailed a passing cab, and having 
therein seated his unfortunate friend, proceeded in the 
most scientific manner to reset and bandage the dislocated 
bone. The operation, it was then mutually agreed upon, 
was a magnificent success, and the author of The Mys. 
teries of Paris laid flattering unction on his soul, and 
dreamed again of splendid fees and of medals of honor. 
Next morning Sue came to see how his friend was pro- 
gressing, when, to his surprise and horror, he discovered 
that he had treated the wrong ankle ! 

You remember the old anecdote of Bliicher's admiration 
of London after a gorgeous city dinner : " What a splen- 
did city it would be to sack ! " cried the old Prussian to 
his beaming host. A fine character is often regarded in 
the same way by the defamer. " All hew their fagots 
from the fallen oak." 

It is recorded that in a debate in the House of Com- 
mons, when Sir Richard Steele rose to speak, several 
members cried out " Tatler ! Tatler ! " and when he went 
down the house afterward, several members were heard 
to say, " It is not so easy a thing to speak in the house ; 
he fancies, because he can scribble, he is fit to play the 



THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 301 

orator." This circumstance, as Lord John Russell very 
appropriately remarked, shows the natural envy of man- 
kind towards those who attempt to attain more than one 
kind of preeminence. For it is, indeed, more often envy 
than prudence which has warned the cobbler not to go 
beyond his last, and has declared that one branch of 
knowledge is enough to exhaust all the energies of the 
human mind. 

" I am Envy ! " exclaims Marlowe in his play of 
Faustus ; " I am Envy ! — begotten of a chimney-sweep 
and an oyster-wife. I cannot read, and therefore wish all 
books burned. I am lean with seeing others eat. Oh that 
there would come a famine all over the world ! — that all 
might die, and I live alone. Then thou shouldst see how 
fat I 'd be ! " You remember the bon-vivant who envied 
the beggar's staring into the cook-shop windows, and 
wished he could be hungry. "Alas!" pathetically ex- 
claimed Mrs. Siddons, to the poet Rogers, " after I be- 
came celebrated, none of my sisters loved me as before." 
"All men," says Plutarch, "will deny envy; and when it 
is alleged, will feign a thousand excuses, pretending they 
were angry, or that they feared or hated the person, 
cloaking envy with the name of any passion they can 
think of, and concealing it as the most loathsome sick- 
ness of the soul." 

Miss Sarah Pocket, one of Dickens' characters, was " a 
blandly vicious person." She would have lingered de- 
lightedly with Dante, to hear the wrangle of the damned 
spirits, and wrangled with them, if permitted. Virgil's re- 
proaches would have gone unheeded. Abu Moslem, who 
rebelled against Ibraham, successor of Mahomet, was 
never seen to smile except on a day of battle. 

There is a species of viper in India, which, in vainly 
attempting to bite, breaks its fangs, so that it is compelled 
to swallow its own deadly poison, and perish by the very 
means intended for the destruction of others. Malice, 



302 



CHARACTERISTICS. 



in the same way, often swallows the greater part of its 
venom. 

Lady Blessington said, " We are never so severe in deal- 
ing with the sins of others as when we are no longer 
capable of committing them ourselves. Few people re- 
member that they have been young, and how hard it was 
then to be chaste and temperate. The first thing men do 
when they have renounced pleasure, either out of de- 
cency, surfeit, or conviction, is to condemn it in others." 
In Montesquieu's Persian Letters is one from the chief 
eunuch, describing to his absent master his conduct of 
the seraglio. " I never open my mouth," he says, " but 
with lectures of duty, chastity, and modesty." 

Few retorts are better than the pavior's to Sydenham, 
the great seventeenth century physician. The doctor 
was complaining of the bad manner in which the pave- 
ment was laid in front of his house, adding, " and now 
you throw down earth to hide your bad work." " Well, 
doctor," said the man quietly, " mine is not the only bad 
work that the earth hides." 

There are many amiable people, it is remarked, who 
take a keen pleasure in dashing cold water upon any lit- 
tle manifestation of self-complacency in their neighbors. 
To find out a man's tenderest corn, and then to bring 
your heel down upon it with a good rasping scrunch, is 
somewhat gratifying to corrupt human nature, A kindly 
wit contrives to convey a compliment in affected satire. 
But the whole aim of a humorist of this variety is to con- 
vey the most mortifying truths in the most brutal plain- 
speaking. 

Macaulay has been accused of yielding t6 the temp- 
tation of imputing motives, a habit which the Spectator 
newspaper pronounced to be his one intellectual vice — 
the vice of rectitude. Sterne represents Walter Shandy 
as " a great motive-monger, and consequently a very dan- 
gerous person for a man to sit by, either laughing or cry- 



THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 303 

ing, — for he generally knew your motive for doing both, 
much better than you knew it yourself." 

" Virtue is a beautiful thing in women," said Douglas 
Jerrold, " when they don't go about like a child with a 
drum, making all sorts of noises with it. There are some 
women (he says) who think virtue was given them as 
claws were given to cats — to do nothing but scratch 
with." Virtue, in that form, is, we suppose, what some- 
body has aptly called the " wrath of celestial minds." 

" They who have (says Coleridge) attained to a self- 
pleasing pitch of civility or formal religion, have usually 
that point of presumption with it, that they make their 
own size the model and rule to examine all by. What is 
below it, they condemn indeed as profane ; but what is 
beyond it, they account needless and affected precise- 
ness ; and therefore are as ready as others to let fly invec- 
tives or bitter taunts against it, which are the keen and 
poisoned shafts of the tongue, and a persecution that 
shall be called to a strict account." Mr. Justice Maule, 
in summing up a case of libel, and speaking of a defend- 
ant who had exhibited a spiteful piety, observed, " One 
of the defendants is, it seems, a minister of religion ; of 
what religion does not appear, but, to judge of his con- 
duct, it cannot be any form of Christianity." 

" Sandy, what is the state of religion in your town ? " 
" Bad, sir, very bad. There are no Christians except 
Davis and myself, and I have my doubts about Davis." 
Sandy was what Montesquieu might have called " a uni- 
versal decider." In the Persian Letters, Rica writes to 
Usbek, " The other day I was at a gathering where I saw 
a very self-satisfied man. In a quarter of an hour he de- 
cided three questions in morals, four historical problems, 
and five points in physics. I have never seen such a uni- 
versal decider." Such complacency is illustrated in the 
Turkish story book. One night, seeing the moon re- 
flected in a well, Nasr-Eddin (the Turkish Joe Miller) 



304 CHARACTERISTICS. 

thought it had tumbled in ; so he lowered a bucket to 
pull it out. The rope getting entangled, he pulled so 
hard that he broke it and fell backwards. When he came 
to after the shock, he saw that the moon was all right in 
the sky. " God be praised and thanked ! " quoth he ; 
" I 've hurt myself, but the moon is put back in her 
place." 

At the grand academy of Lagado, the metropolis of 
Balnibari, Gulliver " heard a warm debate between two 
professors, about the most commodious and effectual 
ways and means of raising money, without grieving the 
subject. The first affirmed, ' the justest method would 
be, to lay a certain tax upon vices and folly ; and the sum 
fixed upon every man to be rated, after the fairest man- 
ner, by a jury of his neighbors.' The second was of an 
opinion directly contrary: 'to tax those qualities of body 
and mind, for which men chiefly value themselves ; the 
rate to be more or less according to the degrees of ex- 
celling ; the decision whereof should be left entirely to 
their own breast.' " 

Mr. Gregory told Caroline Fox that, going by steamer 
from Liverpool to London, he sat by an old gentleman 
who would not talk, but only answered his inquiries by 
nods or shakes of the head. When they went down to 
dinner, he determined to make him speak if possible, so 
he proceeded, " You 're going to London, I suppose?" 
A nod. " I shall be happy to meet you there ; where are 
your quarters ? " There was no repelling this, so his 
friend, with the energy of despair, broke out, " I-I-I-I 'm 
g-g-g-going to D-D-D-Doctor Br-Br-Br-Brewster to be 
c-c-c-cured of this sl-sl-sl-slight im-impediment of sp-sp- 
sp-sp-speech." At this instant a little white face which 
had not appeared before popped out from one of the 
berths and struck in, " Th-th-th-that 's the m-m-m-man 
wh-wh-who c-c-c-c-c-cured me!" 

"Judge not thy fellow-man," says the Jewish Talmud, 



THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 305 

"till thou art similarly situated." The wisdom whereof is 
feelingly expressed in the story of Plutarch. A Roman 
having repudiated his wife, his friends reproached him, 
remonstrating that she was fair and good, and had fine 
children. To which the husband replied by showing his 
foot, and saying, " This shoe is new, and well made ; but 
none of you know where it pinches ; I do." 

Garrick kept a book of all who praised and all who 
abused him. Franklin, in his autobiography, mentions a 
gentleman who, having one very handsome and one shriv- 
eled leg, was wont to test the disposition of a new ac- 
quaintance by observing whether he or she looked first 
or most at the best or worst leg. " He who cannot see 
the beautiful side," says Joubert, " is a bad painter, a 
bad friend, a bad lover ; he cannot lift his mind and his 
heart so high as goodness." " There are heads," says the 
same wise aphorist, "that have no windows, and that 
daylight cannot strike from above. Nothing comes into 
them from the side of heaven." Who has read and not 
enjoyed the Life of John Buncle, Esq. ? the model hus- 
band of seven perfect wives. The curious book is a 
treasure. It is romantic. It is optimistic. It is whole- 
some. So full of good animal spirits. The geese are all 
swans. The houses all have libraries and observatories 
and conservatories and laboratories. The women are all 
learned and beautiful. The religion inculcated is with- 
out cant. The style is delicious. Many of the para- 
graphs end with short sentences, that suggest for all the 
world the licking of overladen lips, after "the hungry 
edge of the appetite " is cloyed. The flavor the queer 
book has ! No wonder it has lived. 

It was the fashion of old, when an ox was led out for 
sacrifice to Jupiter, to chalk the dark spots and give the 
offering a show of unblemished whiteness. " There goes 
Fritz," said one soldier to another, as the king went by. 
" What a shabby old hat he has on ! " " Yes," said the 



306 CHARACTERISTICS. 

other, " but you do not see what a fine head it covers." 
On one occasion Louis XIV. asked Bourdaloue, the fa- 
mous orator of Notre Dame, his opinion of Ornorato, 
the great jocular capuchin. "Sire," was the reply, 
" that preacher tickles indeed the ear, but also pricks the 
heart. People return at his sermons the purses they 
steal at mine." 

"Gil Bias (said his master), leave our neighbors to 
discourse as they please, but let not our repose depend 
on their judgments. Never mind what they think of us, 
provided our own consciences do not wince." " There 
will always be some to hate you," said Publius Syrus, " if 
you love yourself." " Do well," Rubens would say, "and 
people will be jealous of you : do better, and you con- 
found them." 

My grandfather Titbottom " lived much alone, and was 
what people called eccentric — by which I understand, 
that he was very much himself, and, refusing the influ- 
ence of other people, they had their revenges, and called 
him names." 

It is a very serious thing to do as you like. " The 
man, and still more the woman," says John Stuart Mill, 
"who can be accused of either doing 'what nobody does,' 
or of not doing ' what every body does,' is the subject of 
as much depreciatory remark as if he or she had com- 
mitted some grave moral delinquency. Persons require 
to possess a title, or some other badge of rank, or the 
consideration of people of rank, to be able to indulge 
somewhat in the luxury of doing as they like without det- 
riment to their estimation. To indulge somewhat, I re- 
peat : for whoever allow themselves much of that indul- 
gence incur the risk of something worse than disparaging 
speeches — they are in peril of a commission de lunatico, 
and of having their property taken from them and given 
to their relations." 

" Men of true wisdom and goodness," remarks Field- 



THE HABIT OF DETRACTION. 307 

ing, " are contented to take persons and things as they 
are, without complaining of their imperfections or at- 
tempting to amend them ; they can see a fault in a friend, 
a relation, or an acquaintance, without ever mentioning 
it to the parties themselves or to any others ; and this 
often without lessening their affection : indeed, unless 
great discernment be tempered with this overlooking dis- 
position, we ought never to contract friendship but with 
a. degree of folly which we can deceive; for I hope my 
friends will pardon me when I declare, I know none of 
them without a fault ; and I should be sorry if I could 
imagine I had any friend who could not see mine. For- 
giveness of this kind we give and demand in turn : it is 
an exercise of friendship, and perhaps none of the least 
pleasant, and this forgiveness we must bestow without 
desire of amendment. There is perhaps no surer mark 
of folly, than an attempt to correct the natural infirmities 
of those we love : the finest composition of human na- 
ture, as well as the finest china, may have a flaw in it ; 
and this, I am afraid, in either case, is equally incurable, 
though nevertheless the pattern may remain of the high- 
est value." 

An amiable feature in Edmund Burke's disposition, we 
are told, was a dislike to any thing like detraction, or 
that insinuation against private character too often toler- 
ated even in what is called good society, which, without 
amounting to slander, produces nearly the same effects. 
When this occurred in his own house by any one with 
whom he was familiar, he would directly check it, or drop 
a hint to that effect : " Now that you have begun with 
his defects," he would say, " I presume you mean to fin- 
ish with a catalogue of his virtues ; " and sometimes said, 
though mildly, " Censoriousness is allied to none of the 
virtues." When remarks of this kind were introduced by 
others whom it might have been rude to interrupt, he 
took the part of the accused by apologies, or by urging a 



308 CHARACTERISTICS. 

different construction of their actions, and, as soon as he 
could, changed the subject ; exemplifying the advice he 
once familiarly, but wisely gave to a grave and anxious 
acquaintance, who was giving vent to some querulous 
lamentations, " Regard not trifles, my dear sir ; live pleas- 
antly." 

It is best, wisely concluded Thackeray, on the whole, 
for the sake of the good, that the bad should not all be 
found out. You don't want your children to know the 
history of the lady in the next box, who is so handsome, 
and whom they admire so. Ah me, what would life be 
if we were all found out, and punished for all our faults ? 
Jack Ketch would be in permanence ; and then who 
would hang Jack Ketch ? 



XII. 

THE ART OF LIVING. 

The eminent Theodore Parker, not long before his 
death, wrote from Rome, " Oh, that I had known the art 
of life, or found some book or some man to tell me how 
to live, to study, to take exercise, etc. But I found none, 
and so here I am." Alas ! The art of life ! We all sigh 
for it. If only some one knew it, and could impart it, 
how we should all flock to him to learn ! " There is 
nothing so handsome and lawful," says Montaigne, " as 
well and truly to play the man ; nor science so hard as 
well to know how to live this life. . . . We say, ' I have 
done nothing to-day.' What ! have you not lived ? 'T is 
not only the fundamental, but the most illustrious of your 
occupations. ... 'T is an absolute, and, as it were, a 
divine perfection, for a man to know how loyally to enjoy 
his being." To enjoy life, to relish it, without the trans- 
port of some passion, or the gratification of some appe- 
tite. To live to have the fewest regrets. Some such ad- 
monitory words as a wise man once caused to be written 
on his tomb, one would think, would be in every mind's 
eye, — "Think on living." Yesterday — to-day. " We 
are all going to the play, or coming home from it." The 
past is dead, the present is without memory, the future is 
not assured ; we are to be, in a sense, as if we had never 
been. If only we could live to-day upon the experience 
of yesterday, something like foresight would be given us, 
and to-morrow might be easier and more joyful. " Fool- 
ish man ! " exclaims Goethe, " who passes the day in 
complaining of headache, and the night in drinking the 



310 CHARACTERISTICS. 

wine that produces it." " Comedy is crying," said little 
Lucy Triplett to Pegg Woffington. " Father cried all the 
time he was writing his one." " Nobody," says Haw- 
thorne, " will use other people's experience, nor has any 
of his own till it is too late to use it." Experience ! 
" To most men," said Coleridge, " experience is like the 
stern lights of a ship, which illumine only the track it 
has passed." Strange ! that any thing so common and so 
useful should be of so little use as heads. Every body 
has one. It is not strange that we should do foolish 
things \ but that we should do the same foolish things, 
over and over, is more than strange — it is incomprehen- 
sible. In homely phrase, we follow our noses, and not 
our judgments. " When we subtract from life infancy 
(which is vegetation), — sleep, eating, and swilling — 
buttoning and unbuttoning — how much," asks Byron, 
" remains of downright existence ? The summer of a 
dormouse." "Youth," says Beaconsfield, "is a blunder, 
manhood a struggle, old age a regret." " To those who 
think," says Horace Walpole, "life is a comedy — to 
those who feel, a tragedy." " We must laugh at man," 
said the great Napoleon, " to avoid crying at him." 

It was a profound thought of Arthur Helps that if the 
object of the arrangements of the universe was to make 
man happy, he would have been gifted with at least five 
minutes' foresight. " Heavens ! " exclaimed De Quincey, 
... "if life could throw open its long suites of cham- 
bers to our eyes from some station beforehand, — if, from 
some secret stand, we could look by anticipation along 
its vast corridors, and aside into the recesses opening 
upon them from either hand, — halls of tragedy or cham- 
bers of retribution, simply in that small wing, and no 
more, of the great caravanserai which we ourselves shall 
haunt, — simply in that narrow tract of time, and no 
more, where we ourselves shall range, and confining our 
gaze to those, and no others, for whom personally we 



THE ART OF LIVING. 311 

shall be interested, — what a recoil we should suffer' of 
horror in our estimate of life ! . . . Death we can face : 
but knowing, as some of us do, what is human life, which 
of us is it that without shuddering could (if consciously 
we were summoned) face the hour of birth ? " 

Dr. Johnson, whose one enthusiasm was " an enthusi- 
asm of sadness," pronounced the world in its best estate 
to be nothing more than a larger assembly of being, com- 
bining to counterfeit happiness, which they do not feel, 
employing every art and contrivance to embellish life, 
and to hide their real condition from one another. 

The lives of those who in England were loudest in ex- 
claiming, All is for the best, did not prove the truth of 
their doctrine. Shaftesbury, who first brought it into 
fashion, was a very unfortunate man. " I have," says Vol- 
taire, " seen Bolingbroke a prey to vexation and rage, and 
Pope, whom he employed to put his wretched system 
into verse, was the man most to be pitied of any I have 
known ; misshapen in body, dissatisfied in mind, always 
ill, always a burden to himself, and harassed by a hun- 
dred enemies to his very last moment. Let those at least 
be fortunate and prosperous who tell us, All is for the 
best." 

They have a legend in Spain that Adam made a visit 
to the earth a few years ago, to see how his farm was 
getting on. He alighted in Germany, and found schools, 
and colleges, and books, and the people intent on learn- 
ing. He soon left it for France, where the people dressed 
in fantastic styles, and were mad upon works of art and 
improvements unknown to our great ancestor. Disgusted 
with all he saw, he w r ent down to Spain, and, with delight, 
exclaimed, " This is just as I left it ! " But the legend 
stops short of telling us that Spain herself was particularly 
happy in her condition. 

" People always fancy," said Goethe, laughing, " that 
we must become old to become wise ; but, in truth, as 



312 CHARACTERISTICS. 

years advance, it is hard to keep ourselves as wise as we 
were. Man becomes, indeed, in the different stages of 
his life, a different being ; but he cannot say that he is a 
better one, and, in certain matters, he is as likely to be 
right in his twentieth, as in his sixtieth year. We see the 
world one way from a plain, another way from the heights 
of a promontory, another from the glacier fields of the 
primary mountains. We see, from one of these points, 
a larger piece of the world than from the other • but that 
is all, and we cannot say that we see more truly from any 
one than from the rest." 

" All places," said old Burton, " are distant from heaven 
alike ; happily the sun shines as warm in one city as in 
another ; and to a wise man there is no difference of 
climes ; friends are everywhere to him that behaves him- 
self well, and a prophet is not esteemed in his own coun- 
try." 

" There are to-day at Naples," said Montesquieu, " fifty 
thousand men who live only upon herbs, and whose only 
possession is the woolen habit which they wear; yet 
these people, the most miserable upon the earth, fall 
down with fear at the least smoking of Vesuvius : they 
have the foolish apprehension of becoming miserable." 

" I believe," says Thoreau, " that men are still a little 
afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and 
Christianity and candles have been introduced." All 
over England, it is stated, the peasants believe still that 
the spirits of unbaptized children wander in the wind, 
and that the wails at their doors and windows are the 
cries of the little souls condemned to journey till the last 
day. It is said that amongst the curiosities in the India- 
House, is the dream book of Tippoo Sahib, in which he 
daily wrote his dreams and their interpretation with his 
own hand, and to which he, like Wallenstein, might 
mainly have ascribed his fall. Cambyses, for having 
dreamt that his brother should be one day King of Per- 



THE ART OF LIVING. 313 

sia, put him to death ; a brother whom he tenderly loved, 
in whom he had always confided. Cowper communicated 
his waking dreams to a poor mendicant schoolmaster, 
and consulted with him about them, as a person whom 
the Lord was pleased to answer in prayer. Tycho Brahe 
maintained an idiot, who lay at his feet whenever he sat 
down to dinner, and whom he fed with his own hand. 
Persuaded that his mind, when moved, was capable of 
foretelling future events, the great astronomer carefully 
marked every thing he said. Cromwell, Napoleon, John- 
son, Pascal, and many other great personages, were pe- 
culiarly prone to superstition. The fact is, some one 
has said, that men who deal with enormous, incalcula- 
ble forces, as statesmen and generals do, have the same 
temptations as gamblers to indulge in superstition. Be- 
yond what we can see and know remains the province 
in which we can guess, and our unacknowledged guesses 
are often as irrational as those of the savage who fan- 
cies that the paddle-wheel of a steamer is licked round 
by the tongue of a great serpent. 

Many years ago, we are told, before the days of rail- 
ways, a nobleman and his lady, with their infant child, 
were traveling in the depth of winter across Salisbury 
Plain. A snow-storm overtook them \ their child became 
ill from the cold, and they were forced to take refuge in 
a lone shepherd's hut. The wild shepherd and his wife 
drew near the child in awe and silence. The nurse be- 
gan undressing it by the warm cottage fire. Silken frock 
and head-dress did the baby wear. One rich baby-dress 
came off to reveal another more beautiful. Still the shep- 
herd and his wife looked on with awe. At last the proc- 
ess of undressing was completed, and the now naked 
baby w T as being warmed by the fire. Then was it, when 
all these wrappings and outer husks were peeled off, that 
the shepherd and his wife, relieved of their superstition, 
broke silence, exclaiming, " Why, it *s just like one of 
ours ! " 



314 CHARACTERISTICS. 

Allston, the artist, when he was in England, told Cole- 
ridge an anecdote of a youth in America who took it into 
his head to convert a free-thinking companion by appear- 
ing as a ghost before him. He accordingly dressed him- 
self up in the usual way, having previously extracted the 
ball from the pistol which always lay near the head of his 
friend's bed. Upon first awaking, and seeing the appari- 
tion, the youth who was to be frightened very coolly 
looked his companion the ghost in the face, and said, " I 
know you. This is a good joke ; but you see I am not 
frightened. Now you may vanish ! " The ghost stood 
still. " Come," said the other, " that is enough. I shall 
get angry. Away ! " Still the ghost moved not. " By 

," ejaculated the man in bed, " if you do not in three 

minutes go away, I '11 shoot you." He waited the time, 
deliberately leveled the pistol, fired, and with a scream 
at the immobility of the figure, became convulsed, and 
afterward died. The very instant he believed it to be a 
ghost, his human nature fell before it. 

In our purblind and crippled state, our superstitions 
and prejudices are our most convenient crutches. The 
more ignorant we are, the more necessary they seem to 
us. Poor auxiliaries, we may say, but better than noth- 
ing, in our many extremities. Something we must have 
to hold to, as we feel our way in the obscurity of our in- 
telligence and reason ; and these poor aids come down to 
us as a part of the general inheritance of ignorance from 
the generations that groped before us. To whatever ex- 
tent we may conceal them, or deny them, or be ashamed 
of them, in extremity they show themselves, as in death 
the family likeness comes out which is obscured by indi- 
vidual peculiarities during active life. The old lithograph 
printer at the Riverside Press told us that it not unfre- 
quently happens that the picture, thought to have been 
completely ground out of the stone, reappears to contest 
its successor and confound the printer. 



THE ART OF LIVING. 315 

Alas ! our ignorance. Our transgressions are quite as 
often blunders as sins. The Japanese do not swear at 
one another ; they say " Fool ! " Cave, who was jailer 
during the two years Leigh Hunt was a prisoner, had be- 
come a philosopher by the force of his situation. He 
said to Hunt one day, when a new batch of criminals 
came in, " Poor ignorant wretches, sir ! " The Chinese 
have a profound saying which expresses it : " He who 
finds pleasure in vice and pain in virtue is a novice in 
both." 

We are told of a traveler who once went all the way 
from New Zealand to see London. He landed at Poplar, 
where he stayed till it was time to take ship back again, 
which he did under the firm belief that he had seen Lon- 
don in all its grandeur. Linnaeus considered that a small 
quantity of moss that could be covered by the hand might 
be the study of a lifetime. It is asserted that in the very 
advanced and ramified science of chemistry, fourteen years 
are required by the student to overtake knowledge as it 
now stands. That is to say, that to learn what is known, 
before you can proceed to institute new experiments, 
fourteen years are necessary — twice the time which the 
old law of England exacted of an apprentice bound to 
any trade. It is pronounced by De Quincey to be one of 
the misfortunes of life, that we must read thousands of 
books only to discover that w r e need not have read them. 
"The modern precept of education very often is (says 
Sydney Smith) ' Take the admirable Crichton for your 
model ; I would have you ignorant of nothing.' Now my 
advice on the contrary is, to have the courage to be igno- 
rant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the 
calamity of being ignorant of everything." So too, when 
somebody, in eulogizing a distinguished member of one of 
the English universities, observed that " science was his 
forte," Sydney retorted, " and omniscience his foible." 

It is true, as a quaint old writer puts it, that the great- 



316 CHARACTERISTICS. 

est part of our felicity is to be well-born — of parents, in 
other words, with sound bodies, sound minds, and correct 
principles, and to inherit the same. Especially, if it be 
true, as Hazlitt asserts, that " no one ever changes his 
character from the time he is two years old ; nay, from 
the time he is two hours old. We may, with instruction 
and opportunity, mend our manners, or else alter them 
for the worse, ' as the flesh or fortune shall serve ; ' but 
the character, the internal, original bias remains always 
the same, true to itself to the very last — ' and feels the 
ruling passion strong in death.' . . . The color of our 
lives is woven into the fatal thread at our births ; our 
original sins and our redeeming graces are infused into 
us ; nor is the bond, that confirms our destiny, ever can- 
celed." 

Nevertheless, against all odds, humanity hopefully ex- 
erts herself to overcome every neglect and effect. " This 
afternoon," says a late writer, " I went into the New Eng- 
land Hospital for Women and Children, and the head 
physician, a woman, with a rare blending of sweetness 
and light in her face, took me round through the wards. 
Presently, we entered that of the children, where were, 
perhaps, half a dozen little ones of from two to five, with 
their attendants. How the eyes beamed and the hands 
began to wave when they saw the welcome face ! In the 
middle of the floor lay a warm blanket, on which was 
sprawling a chubby-cheeked, flaxen-haired little fellow of 
two and a half or three. ' Let me show you how he can 
help himself on to his feet,' the beaming doctor said. 
And sure enough, when she had encouragingly reached 
him her hands, he worked himself up erect in such cred- 
itable fashion that I did not wonder at the banners of tri- 
umph hung out from his proud little face. ' Two months 
ago,' she went on to say, 'he was brought here diseased 
and half-starved. No bones, gristle only, through lack 
of proper food. But I '11 make a brave little man out of 



THE ART OF LIVING. 317 

him yet ! ' And her face glowed a look of such genuine 
delight over her blessed work that I felt an instinctive 
thrill." 

" There are more diminutive and ill-shapen men and 
women in Rome," says Hawthorne, " than I ever saw 
elsewhere, a phenomenon .to be accounted for, perhaps, 
by their custom of wrapping the new-born infant in 
swaddling clothes." Speaking of the customs of the Mo- 
ravians, Southey remarks : " The system of taking chil- 
dren from their parents, breaking up domestic society, and 
sorting human beings like cabbage - plants, according to 
their growth, is not more consonant to nature than the 
Egyptian method of hatching eggs in ovens : a great pro- 
portion of the chickens are said to be produced with some 
deformity, and hens thus hatched bear a less price than 
those which have been reared in the natural way, because 
it often happens that they will not sit upon their eggs, — 
the course of instinct having been disturbed." 

It is stated that when the poet Wordsworth was en- 
gaged in composing The White Doe of Rylstone, he re- 
ceived a wound in his foot, and he observed that the 
continuation of the literary labor increased the irritation 
of the wound, whereas by suspending his work he could 
diminish it, and absolute mental rest produced a perfect 
cure. " Constitution," says Dr. Holmes, in his remark- 
able Elsie Venner, "has more to do with Belief than 
people think for. I went to the Universalist Church, 
when I was in the city one day, to hear a famous man 
whom all the world knows, and I never saw such pews- 
full of broad shoulders and florid faces, and substantial, 
wholesome-looking persons, male and female, in all my 
life. Why, it was astonishing. Either their creed made 
them healthy, or they chose it because they were healthy." 

If only full-grown men and full-grown women, with 
sound bodies and sound minds, were suffered to marry ! 
But conscience, integrity, and reason, have little to do 



318 CHARACTERISTICS. 

with the divine relation. " A youth marries in haste," 
says Emerson ; " afterward, when his mind is opened to 
the reason of the conduct of life, he is asked what he 
thinks of the institution of marriage, and of the right re- 
lation of the sexes ? * I should have much to say,' he 
might reply, 'if the question were open, but I have a 
wife and children, and all question is closed to me.' " 
A young man came to say he was about to be married, 
and to ask what was thought of it. The reply was, " You 
say you are going to be married ; that settles the matter 
for you. If you had told me you thought of marriage, I 
might have had something to say of it." " More mis- 
ery," says an eminent married woman, "comes from the 
antagonism between man and woman than from all other 
causes put together • for each starts in life worshiping 
an ideal being who has no existence in this world." 
"That so few marriages are observed to be happy," says 
Montaigne, " is a token of its price and value. If well 
formed, and rightly taken, 't is the best of all human so- 
cieties. We cannot live without it, and yet we do noth- 
ing but degrade it. It happens as with cages ; the birds 
without despair to get in, and those within despair of get- 
ting out." " Did you ever hear my definition of mar- 
riage ? " asked Sydney Smith. " It is that it resembles 
a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated ; 
often moving in opposite directions, yet always punishing 
any one who comes between them." You remember the 
conceit of the great French satirist, of the man who had 
been made deaf by his physician, that he might not hear 
the scoldings of his wife, whose tongue the utmost skill 
of the surgeon had previously failed to cure of its vio- 
lence. " Some time after, the doctor asked for his fee of 
the husband ; who answered, that truly he was deaf, and 
so was not able to understand what the tenor of his de- 
mand might be. Whereupon the leech bedusted him with 
a sort of powder, which rendered him a fool immedi- 



THE ART OF LIVING. 319 

ately, so great was the stultifying virtue of that strange 
kind of pulverized dose. Then did this fool of a hus- 
band, and his mad wife, join together, and falling on the 
doctor and the surgeon, did so scratch, bethwack, and 
bang them, that they were left half dead upon the place, 
so furious were the blows which they received." " I am 
well aware," wrote Schiller to Korner, " that of ten men 
who marry, there are nine who choose their wives to 
please other people — I choose mine to please myself." 
Madame de Stael's marriage, like most marriages of pol- 
icy, was far from being a happy one. When she became 
a mother, she used sorrowfully to say, " I will force my 
daughter to make a marriage of inclination." 

" The most important thing in life," said Pascal, " is 
the choice of a profession ; yet this is a thing purely 
in the disposal of chance." And we never stop to con- 
sider the effects of occupation upon mind and character. 
Rosch and Esquirol affirm from observation that indigo- 
dyers become melancholy, and those who dye scarlet, 
choleric. 

" The high prize of life," says Emerson, " the crown- 
ing fortune of a man, is to be born with a bias to some 
pursuit, which finds him in employment and happiness." 

Quin was very proud of his vocation. A peer, who, at 
least, had wit enough to enjoy Quin's society, had the 
ill-manners to say, "What a pity it is, Mr. Quin, you are 
an actor." " Why," said ever-ready James, " what would 
you have me be ? — a lord ? " 

It has been very truly said that the man who would 
raise himself to be a power must begin by securing a pe- 
cuniary independence. Michelet describes a French pea- 
sant on a Sunday morning, walking out in his clean linen 
and un soiled blouse. His wife is at church, and this 
simple farmer paces across his acres and looks fondly at 
his land. You see him in solitude, but his face is illu- 
minated when he thinks his farm is his own, from the 



320 CHARACTERISTICS. 

surface of the globe to its centre, and that the climate is 
his own from the surface of the earth up to the seventh 
heaven. You find that man, if a stranger approaches 
him, withdrawing, that he may enjoy his affection in soli- 
tude; and as he turns away from his Sunday walk through 
his own pastures, you notice that he looks back over his 
shoulder with affection, and parts with regret. . He is not 
at work ; he is not out to keep off interlopers ; he is out 
simply to enjoy the feeling of ownership, and to look 
upon himself as a member of responsible society. His 
dear possessions are without encumbrance. He owes no 
man any thing. That hated thing, mortgage — from two 
French words, meaning death-pledge (death-grip) — does 
not affright him. Ah ! if only every land-owner realized 
its derivation and full meaning. In the time of Solon a 
pillar was erected on every piece of mortgaged land, in- 
scribed with the name of the lender and the amount of 
the loan. Every debtor unable to fulfill his contract was 
liable to be adjudged as the slave of his creditor, until he 
could find means either of paying it or working it out ; 
and not only he himself, but his minor sons and unmar- 
ried daughters and sisters also, whom the law gave him 
the power of selling. 

The feeling of ownership, which comes of possessing 
what is the representative of so much toil and painstak- 
ing fidelity — of so much self-denial and so much self- 
sacrifice — amounts to a steady and supporting emotion 
— it is fruition ; and its good effect upon the character, 
when freed of any feeling of avarice, is hardly estimable, 
and is not to be depreciated. That nature, somebody 
has said, is the nearest complete which has the delicate 
touch, the sheltered fineness, and the sweet calmness of 
good circumstances, with the robust habit of exertion, 
and experiences of the realities of poverty ; and such 
natures we believe to be found especially in America. 

" I affirm," says Sterne, in one of his sermons, " that 



THE ART OF LIVING. 32 1 

it is not riches which are the cause of luxury, — but the 
corrupt calculation of the world, in making riches the 
balance for honor, for virtue, and for every thing that is 
great and good ; which goads so many thousands on with 
an affectation of possessing more than they have, and 
consequently in engaging in a system of expenses they 
cannot support. In one word, 't is the necessity of ap- 
pearing to be some body, in order to be so, which ruins 
the world." 

" Pay as you go," said John Randolph, " is the philos- 
opher's stone." "I always say to young people (says 
Sydney Smith), Beware of carelessness ! no fortune will 
stand it long ; you are on the high road to ruin the mo- 
ment you think yourself rich enough to be careless." 
" Economy," said Voltaire, " is the source of liberality." 
Thackeray, commending Macaulay's frugality, admon- 
ishes : " To save be your endeavor, against the night's 
coming, when no man may work ; when the arm is weary 
with long day's labor ; when the brain perhaps grows 
dark ; when the old, who can labor no more, want warmth 
and rest, and the young ones call for supper." Crabb 
Robinson was industrious and frugal that he might with- 
draw from his profession in time (as Wordsworth ex- 
pressed it) " for an autumnal harvest of leisure." An 
aged husbandman, according to the German allegory, was 
working in his rich and wide-spread fields, at the decline 
of day, when he was suddenly confronted by a spectral 
illusion, in the form of a man. " Who, and what are 
you ? " said the astonished husbandman. " I am Solo- 
mon, the wise," was the reply, " and I have come to in- 
quire what you are laboring for ? " " If you are Solo- 
mon," said the husbandman, " you ought to know that I 
am following out the advice you have given. You re- 
ferred me to the ant for instruction, and hence my toil." 
" You have," said the apparition, " learnt but half your 
lesson ; I directed you to labor in the proper season for 



322 CHARACTERISTICS. 

labor, in order that you might repose in the proper sea- 
son for repose." 

An economist, or a man (says Emerson) who can pro- 
portion his means and his ambition, or bring the year 
round with expenditure which expresses his character, 
without embarrassing one day of his future, is already a 
master of life, and a freeman. Lord Burleigh writes to 
his son that one ought never to devote more than two- 
thirds of his income to the ordinary expenses of life, since 
the extraordinary will be certain to absorb the other 
third. 

A good illustration of the ethics of debt is to be found 
in Haydon's life-long habit, which was, " to scheme a 
great work, requiring years of labor, without money of 
his own to carry him on a month • to borrow, right and 
left, as he went on, leaving, at the same time, his land- 
lord and his tradesmen unpaid \ to defy or pacify, as best 
he could, the clamor of creditors who thus gathered 
round his painting room ; and then, when the work was 
finished and sold, to clear off as much of his debt as the 
price would allow, leave himself penniless, or nearly so, 
and begin the same process over again. The result was 
forty years of ceaseless braggardism and unrest, and a 
wreck at last." Cooke, who translated Hesiod, lived 
twenty years on a translation of Plautus, for which he 
was always taking subscriptions. Paschal, historiographer 
of France, was continually announcing titles of works he 
was preparing for the press, that his pension for writing 
on the history of France might not be stopped. When 
he died, his historical labors did not exceed six pages ! 

It was a saying of Aristotle, that some men are as 
stingy as if they expected to live forever, and some as 
extravagant as if they expected to die immediately. In 
the buried city of Pompeii, near the temple of Isis, was 
found a prostrate skeleton, and in its hand were clutched 
three hundred and sixty coins of silver, forty-two of 



THE ART OF LIVING. 323 

bronze, and eight of gold, wrapped securely in a cloth. 
He had stopped before his flight to load himself with the 
treasures of the temple, and was overtaken by the shower 
of cinders and suffocated. 

It has been remarked by an acute writer, that as to the 
individual it may sometimes be questioned, whether a 
prudent temperament secures as much of happiness, 
taking all the years of life together, as a careless and 
impulsive one. Of all dreary disillusions, the dreariest 
must be that of the rich old man, who has denied him- 
self every pleasure while he had senses and emotions to 
taste it, and sits down to partake at the eleventh hour of 
the feast of life, when appetite is dead, and love has fled, 
and disease lays its grip on him, and reminds him that it 
is time to go to that bed which all his balance at the 
banker's can unfortunately make neither more warm nor 
soft. But however it may be for the man himself, there 
can be no doubt that the fewer prudent and frugal per- 
sons there are in any country, so much the less prosper- 
ous that country will be • and thus it comes to pass that 
the land where the principle of wine to-day, water to- 
morrow, has too many adherents, is (other potent causes 
aiding to the result) in the condition Ireland has been for 
centuries back. 

A man is said to be rich in proportion to the number 
of things which he can afford to let alone. You remem- 
ber the remark of the old philosopher, when passing 
through the crowded bazaar where every thing attractive 
and costly was displayed for sale : " How many things 
there are in this world that I do not want ! " A certain 
Chinese mandarin, who delighted in covering his ripfely 
dressed person with precious stones, was one day accosted 
in the streets of Pekin by a priest of the sect of Fohi, 
who, bowing very low, thanked him for his jewels. 
" What does the man mean ? " cried the mandarin. " I 
never gave thee any of my jewels." " No," replied the 



/ 



324 CHARACTERISTICS. 

other ; " but you let me look at them, and that is all the 
use you can make of them yourself; so there is no differ- 
ence between us, except that you have the trouble of 
watching them, and that is an employment I do not 
want." You recollect the odd way the old bookkeeper 
had of enjoying the vast possessions of the rich old mer- 
chant. Bourne owned the fences and the dirt, Titbottom 
the sky and the landscape. " I don't hesitate to say," 
said Thomas Hughes (adopting an observation of John 
Sterling), " that the worst education which teaches sim- 
plicity and self-denial is better than the best which 
teaches all else but this." 

" Get of gold," says the Koran, " as much as you need, 
of wisdom all that you can." With all that you can com- 
mand of either, happiness will not abide. " Who can 
tell where happiness may come ; or where, though an ex- 
pected guest, it may never show its face?" A well- 
known divine, in his wise old age, once said to a newly 
married pair : " I want to give you this advice, my chil- 
dren — don't try to be happy. Happiness is a shy nymph, 
and if you chase her you will never catch her ; but just go 
quietly on, and do your duty, and she will come to you." 

To enjoy the present, without regret for the past or so- 
licitude for the future, appeared to Goldsmith to be the 
only general precept respecting the pursuit of happiness 
that can be applied with propriety to any condition of life. 
" The whole art of life," wrote Sir William Hamilton, " is 
really to live all the days of our life ; and not with anx- 
ious care disturb the sweetest- hour that life affords, — 
which is the present." 

" Moderation and prudence in conduct," says La Bruy- 
ere, " leave man obscure. To be known and admired, 
't is necessary to have great virtues, or, what is perhaps 
equal, great vices." Boswell's servant, who went with 
him and Dr. Johnson to the Hebrides, had traveled over 
a great part of Europe, and spoke many languages. 



THE ART OF LIVING. 325 

Johnson, who seldom applied the epithet to any one, pro- 
nounced him a " wise man." It has been said by a man 
of a genius and a renown so great as to render his saying 
the more remarkable, that if we could become thoroughly 
acquainted with the biography of any one who has 
achieved fame, we should find that he had met with some 
person to fame unknown, whose intellect had impressed 
him more than that of any of the celebrated competitors 
with whom it had been his lot to strive. A startling 
effect is produced upon us, it has also been truly ob- 
served, when we suddenly become acquainted with a 
remarkable person whom we have never seen or heard 
of, yet who has been long living in the world and long 
laboring in it ; and who, as we feel at once, must have 
exercised for all that time a strong intellectual influence 
in circles of which we did not know the existence. 

Forecast is as good as work, is an English proverb. 
A man should know his opportunity, and seize it when 
it comes. " A dwarf may be carried on the crest of a 
wave to the top of a cliff, which a giant could not climb 
from the beach." Vigilance and adaptability are nearly 
all to the ordinary man. The Persians have it that a poor 
man watched a thousand years before the gate of Para- 
dise. Then, when he snatched one little nap, — it opened 
and shut. Sir James Mackintosh returned with broken 
health to England from India, where he had been judge 
of the admiralty court, and recorder of Bombay. " He 
had been to El Dorado, but had forgotten the gold ; and 
was obliged to confess to his friends that he was ashamed 
of his poverty, since it showed a want of common sense." 
" My opinion is," said Gargantua's instructor, " that we 
pursue the enemy whilst the luck is on our side ; for 
Occasion hath all her hair on her forehead ; when she is 
past you may not recall her, — she hath no tuft whereby 
you can lay hold on her, for she is bald in the hinder part 
of the head, and never returneth again." 



326 CHARACTERISTICS. 

" It is a maxim worthy of all acceptation," says Emer- 
son, " that a man may have that allowance he takes. 
Take the place and attitude which belong to you, and all 
men acquiesce. The world must be just. It leaves every 
man with profound unconcern, to set his own rate." " So 
soon as you feel confidence in yourself," said Mephis- 
topheles to Faust, " you know the art of life." Half the 
failures in life, it is affirmed, arise from pulling in one's 
horse as he is leaping. We are pusillanimously afraid of 
ourselves. Alexander perceived that the fury of Buceph- 
alus proceeded merely from the fear he had of his own 
shadow, whereupon, getting on his back, he ran him 
against the sun, so that the shadow fell behind, and by 
that means he tamed the animal. " Walking along Picca- 
dilly with Sheridan," says Kelly, " I asked him if he had 
told the Queen that he was writing a play. He said he 
had, and he was actually about one. ' Not you,' said I to 
him • ' you will never write again ; you are afraid to write.' 
' Of whom am I afraid ? ' said he, fixing his penetrating 
eye on me. I said, ' You are afraid of the author of the 
School for Scandal.' " But it is recorded of Guido, whose 
paintings were much sought after, that from mere good- 
nature and a desire to help unsuccessful artists, he al- 
lowed imitations to be made of his works, to which he 
added one or two touches, that they might be sold as his 
productions. Is there any where to be found such an- 
other instance of liberality at the risk of a great repu- 
tation ? 

Character and powers, early and late, do not much 
vary. The inspiration of purpose, and work, very soon 
establish personality. Can any man remember when the 
radically distinguishing things he stands for first took root 
within him ? Nathaniel Hawthorne, when he was sixteen 
years old, sent forth, we are told, the first number of The 
Spectator, a small but neatly printed and well edited 
paper. A prospectus had been issued only the week be- 



THE ART OF LIVING. 327 

fore, setting forth that The Spectator would be issued on 
Wednesdays, " price twelve cents per annum, payment to 
be made at the end of the year." Among the advertise- 
ments on the last page was the following : " Nathaniel 
Hawthorne proposes to publish, by subscription, a neat 
edition of The Miseries of Authors, to which will be 
added a sequel containing facts and remarks drawn from 
his own experience." The Hawthorne of The Scarlet Let- 
ter already existed. An oration delivered by Daniel Web- 
ster, July 4, 1802, — then twenty years old, and principal of 
Fryeburg Academy, — was recently discovered in a mass 
of the author's private papers which had found their way 
into a junk shop. The last speech made by Mr. Webster 
in the Senate, July 17, 1850, concluded with the same 
peroration with which he closed the Fryeburg oration, 
forty-eight years before ! 

Do you remember the words that young Carlyle wrote 
to his brother, nine years after he had left the University 
of Edinburgh as a student, forty-three years before he 
returned as its Rector ? "I say, Jack, thou and I must 
never falter. Work, my boy, work unweariedly. I swear 
that all the thousand miseries of this hard fight, and ill- 
health, the most terrific of them all, shall never chain us 
down. By the river Styx it shall not. Two fellows from 
a nameless spot in Annandale shall yet show the world 
the pluck that is in the Carlyles." 

" There are three things, young gentleman," said Nel- 
son to one of his midshipmen, " which you are constantly 
to bear in mind. Firstly, you must always implicitly 6bey 
orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your 
own respecting their propriety. Secondly, you must con- 
sider every man your enemy who speaks ill of your king. 
Thirdly, you must hate a Frenchman as you do the 
devil." 

A young student asked Sir Vicary Gibbs how he should 
learn his profession. Sir Vicary : " Read Coke upon 



328 CHARACTERISTICS. 

Littleton." Student : " I have read Coke upon Little- 
ton." Sir Vicary : " Read Coke upon Littleton over 
again." Student : " I have read it thrice over." Sir 
Vicary : " Thrice ? " Student : " Yes ; three times over 
very carefully." Sir Vicary: "You may now sit down 
and make an abstract of it." 

" What a wedge, what a beetle, what a catapult," ex- 
claims Thoreau, " is an earnest man ! What can resist 
him ? " In 1849, at the time of general depression in 
Garibaldi's Italian Revolutionary army, he issued this 
proclamation: "In recompense for the love you may 
show your country I offer you hunger, thirst, cold, war, 
and death ; who accepts these terms, let him follow me." 
"The Puritans," says Macaulay, "even in the depths of 
the prisons to which Elizabeth had sent them, prayed, 
and with no simulated fervor, that she might be kept from 
the dagger of the assassin, that rebellion might be put 
down under her feet, and that her arms might be victori- 
ous by sea and land. One of the most stubborn of the 
stubborn sect, immediately after one of his hands had 
been lopped off by the executioner for an offense into 
which he had been hurried by his intemperate zeal, 
waved his hat with the hand which was still left him, and 
shouted, God save the Queen ! " • 

While General Jackson was President, the small-pox 
broke out among his servants, and nearly every body 
fled ; but the President remained in the White House, 
and waited on black and white with unremitting attention. 
He did not leave them wholly to the protection of Prov- 
idence and inefficient help — he helped them himself. 
Just before going into battle, Nelson wrote to his wife : 
" The lives of all are in the hands of Him who knows 
best whether to preserve mine or not ; my character and 
good name are in my own keeping." After a day's weary 
march, Mahomet was camping with his followers. One 
said, " I will loose my camel and commit it to God." 
"Friend, tie thy camel, and commit it to God." 



THE ART OF LIVING. 329 

" In manners," said Madame de Maintenon, " tranquillity 
is the supreme power." Goethe, in a note to Eckermann, 
refers to that " state of tranquil activity, from which views 
of the world and experiences are evolved in the surest and 
purest manner." It so.often happens, it is observed, that 
mere activity is a waste of time, that people who have a 
morbid habit of being busy are often terrible time-wast- 
ers, whilst, on the contrary, those who are judiciously 
deliberate, and allow themselves intervals of leisure, see 
the way before them in those intervals, and save time by 
the accuracy of their calculations. 

The self-possession which distinguished Romiily is an 
invariable characteristic of a truly great mind. Lord 
Chesterfield used to say of a person in a hurry that he 
plainly showed his business was too much for him. The 
Duke of Newcastle, commemorated in Humphry Clinker, 
was always in a hurry. It used to be said of him that 
he had lost one hour in the morning which he was look- 
ing for during the rest of the day. When Nelson had 
finished his famous despatch to the Crown Prince of Den- 
mark, at the battle of Copenhagen, a wafer was given 
him to seal it with ; but he ordered a candle to be 
brought from the cock -pit, and sealed the letter with wax, 
affixing a larger seal than he ordinarily used. " This," 
said he, " is no time to appear hurried and informal." " I 
remember a small Mussulman boy," says an officer, in 
his published Recollections of Military Service in India, 
" one of our servants, lying on the veranda, apparently 
asleep, when, to our horror, we saw a cobra creep out of 
a lot of boots lying near, which the boy had been clean- 
ing. The cobra passed over his face, and actually darted 
his fork in and out of his open mouth. The boy never 
stirred, and we remarked how providential it was that he 
was fast asleep. The snake after a time glided off, when 
the boy jumped up, and seized a stick, and killed it- 
He had been awake all the time." 



330 CHARACTERISTICS. 

Mirabeau is described by Carlyle as a man stout of 
heart ; whose popularity was not of the populace, whom 
no clamor of unwashed mobs without doors, or of washed 
mobs within, could scare from his way. Dumont remem- 
bers hearing him deliver a Report on Marseilles : " every 
word was interrupted by abusive epithets ; caluminator, 
liar, assassin, scoundrel : Mirabeau pauses a moment, 
and, in a honeyed tone, addressing the most furious, 
says : ' I wait, Messieurs, till these amenities be ex- 
hausted.' " " Oliver Cromwell, when that agitator Ser- 
jeant stept forth from the ranks, with plea of grievances, 
and began gesticulating and demonstrating, as the mouth- 
piece of thousands, expectant there, — discerned, with 
those truculent eyes of his, how the matter lay, — plucked 
a pistol from his holsters ; blew agitator and agitation 
instantly out. Noll was a man fit for these things." " It 
is false," said Napoleon, " that we fired first with blank 
charge ; it had been a waste of life to do that. . . . The 
French Revolution is blown into space by it." It is 
stated that at one of the judicial sittings in Tunis, a 
Moor approached the throne silently, holding a large 
sack in his hand, out of which rolled two human heads, 
bleeding, one a man's, the other a woman's. The Bey 
looked first at the heads, then at the Moor, and without 
saying a word, made the sign which meant acquittal. It 
was simply a husband who discovered his wife was de- 
ceiving him. 

" A stream," says Landor, " is never so smooth, equa- 
ble, and silvery, as at the instant before it becomes a 
cataract. The children of Niobe fell by the arrows of 
Diana, under a bright and cloudless sky." Mark the 
quiet of an animal before the fatal spring, and how se- 
rene and fair is the complexion of determined rage. 

Genuine repose is unconscious. Leigh Hunt said of 
Sir William Temple, " I believe he talks too much of his 
ease, to be considered very easy. It is an ill head that 
takes so much concern about its pillow." 



THE ART OF LIVING. 33 1 

Barnes, editor of the Times newspaper, related to 
Crabb Robinson that at Cambridge, having had lessons 
from a boxer, he gave himself airs, and meeting with a 
fellow sitting on a stile in a field, who did not make way 
for him as he expected, and as he thought due to a 
gownsman, he asked what he meant, and said he had a 
great mind to thrash him. "The man smiled," said 
Barnes, " put his hand on my shoulder, and said, ' Young 
man, I 'm Cribb.' I confessed myself delighted ; gave 
him my hand ; took him to my room, where I had a wine- 
party, and he was the lion." Cribb was at that time the 
champion of England ! The same writer refers, in his 
Diary, to another " most interesting party " at Lord Ken- 
yon's. " The lion of the party," he says (on that occasion, 
of quite another sort), " was Daniel Webster, the American 
lawyer and orator. He has a strongly marked expression 
of countenance. So far from being a Republican in the 
modern sense, he has an air of Imperial strength, such as 
Caesar might have had." When Jenny Lind was in Boston, 
Mr. Webster called upon her. It is said he talked sound 
sense to her, with dignity and stately courtesy. When he 
was gone, Jenny jumped up, walked the floor excitedly, 
clasped her hands, and with indescribable earnestness, 
exclaimed, " Oh ! that is a man ! that is a man ! I never 
saw a man before ! I never saw a man before ! " 

How the " godlike Daniel " would have been stirred by 
the ecstatic praises of the sweet songstress ! We all like 
to be appreciated. Sterne, in replying to the panegyrics 
of a person who called himself Ignatius Sancho, says very 
truly, " 'T is all affectation to say a man is not gratified 
with being praised. We only want it to be sincere." It 
is a maxim of Vauvenargues', " If men did not flatter one 
another there would be little society ; " and it is a mean- 
ness, we say, to be suspecting the motive. 

" It was a maxim with Foxey, our reverend father," 
said Brass (in Old Curiosity Shop) to his sister Sarah, — ■ 



332 CHARACTERISTICS. 

" ' Always suspect every body.' That 's the maxim to go 
through life with." Dickens moralizes upon the detesta- 
ble character he was delineating : " It will always happen 
that men of the world, who go through it in armor, defend 
themselves from quite as much good as evil ; to say noth- 
ing of the inconvenience and absurdity of mounting guard 
with a microscope at all times, and of wearing a coat of 
mail on the most innocent occasions." The very bad or 
desperately vicious, fortunately, is exceptional. Interest, 
instinct, and reason are united against it. God and na- 
ture forbid it. It must be rare, and it must generally fail 
of its purpose, if man and society are to exist and be se- 
cure. Courage and virtue, therefore, are not diverted by 
it or alarmed. Some time before the battle of Dunbar, as 
Cromwell, accompanied by a number of his officers, was 
visiting the ground, a Scotch soldier, who had hidden be- 
hind a wall which surrounded the field, fired at him, miss- 
ing his mark. Without being alarmed, and without in- 
creasing the gait of his horse, Cromwell went toward the 
Scotchman, and said, " Bungling rogue ! if one of my sol- 
diers had failed in an end so important, he would soon 
be judged by a council of war." 

Flattery, that is evil, and conspiracy, are illustrated in 
the manner in which the Arabs capture the hyena. Its 
subterranean abode is described as so narrow as not to 
permit of the animal turning about in it ; and hence, to 
use the Arabian phraseology, it has " two doors," by one 
of which it enters, and by the other goes out. The Arabs, 
lying concealed in the vicinity of one of these dens, watch 
the particular hole by which the hyena enters, and then 
proceed to place a strong rope net over the opposite hole, 
— whilst one of their fraternity, skilled in the business, 
and prepared with a rope, works his way in by " the 
door " which the animal has entered. As he nears the 
brute (which cannot turn upon him) he " charms it," say- 
ing, " Come, my dear little creature, I will lead you to 



THE ART OF LIVING. 333 

places where many carcasses are prepared for you — 
plenty of food awaits you. Let me fasten this rope to 
your beautiful leg, and stand quiet while I do so." This 
sentence, or something very similar to it, is repeated un- 
til the operation is effectually achieved ; when the daring 
son of the Sahara gores the brute with a dagger till he 
is forced to rush out, and he is caught in the net, and 
either killed on the spot or is carried off alive. If any 
blunder happens, however — as is sometimes the case — 
through which the hyena is enabled to struggle and re- 
enter its abode, the " charmer," in spite of his charming, 
falls a victim to its savage rage, and frequently his com- 
panions can scarcely contrive to get clear without feeling 
something of its effects. 

It is pronounced a characteristic of wisdom not to dis- 
pute things. " There is," says Sherlock, " no dispute 
managed without passion, and yet there is scarce a dis- 
pute worth a passion." A modern English writer is said 
to have been very fond of controversy for its own sake, 
and once at dinner to have roared out to some one at the 
end of the table, " I totally disagree with you. What was 
it you said ? " On one occasion, when they were to- 
gether, Dr. Campbell said something, and Dr. Johnson be- 
gan to dispute it. " Come," said Campbell, "we do not 
want to get the better of one another ; we want to increase 
each other's ideas." Johnson took it in good part, and 
the conversation then went on coolly and instructively. 
When the erudite Casaubon visited the Sorbonne they 
showed him the hall in which, as they proudly told him, 
disputations had been held for four hundred years. 
"And what," said he, "have they decided ? " On first 
nights, in the time of Voltaire, when partisans were un- 
usually excited, each spectator was asked, as he entered 
the parquette, " Do you come to hiss ? " " Yes." " Then 
sit over there." But if he answered, " I come to ap- 
plaud," he was directed to the other side. Thus the two 
belligerent bodies were massed for more effective action. 



334 CHARACTERISTICS. 

The young Smiths, we are told, employed their infor- 
mation in disputing with one another. " The result," 
says Sydney, " was to make us the most intolerable and 
overbearing set of boys that can well be imagined, till 
later in life we found our level in the world." Franklin 
relates that he had contracted in youth the same litigious 
habit by reading the controversial books on religion which 
formed his father's little library. " Persons," he adds, 
"of good sense, I have since observed, seldom fall into 
it, except lawyers, university men, and generally men of 
all sorts who have been bred in Edinburgh." It would 
perhaps have been juster to say, that persons of good 
sense, like himself and Sydney Smith, soon discover that 
the practice is displeasing, and lay it aside. " We are 
told," says Sydney further, " ' Let not the sun go down on 
your wrath.' This, of course, is best; but, as it gener- 
ally does, I would add, Never act or write till it has clone 
so. This rule has saved me from many an act of folly. 
It is wonderful what a different view we take of the same 
event four and twenty hours after it has happened." 

"I asserted that the world was mad," exclaimed a poor 
philosopher, " and the world said that I was mad, and, 
confound them, they outvoted me." In Hawthorne's Amer- 
ican Note-Books a memorandum is made of a sketch to be 
given of a modern reformer. " He goes about the streets 
haranguing most eloquently, and is on the point of mak- 
ing many converts, when his labors are suddenly inter- 
rupted by the appearance of the keeper of a mad-house, 
whence he had escaped." 

A thick-headed squire being worsted by Sydney Smith 
in an argument, took his revenge by exclaiming : " If I 
had a son that was an idiot, by Jove, I 'd make him a 
parson." " Very probable," replied Sydney • "but I see 
your father was of a very different mind." 

An anecdote which Robert Hall told of himself is in- 
structive. He set out to defend the doctrine of the Trin- 



THE ART OF LIVING. 335 

ity, in a series of sermons. In prosecuting the discus- 
sion, he attacked the various forms of heretical dissent 
from the orthodox opinion. At the conclusion of his 
discourses, much to his surprise, he discovered that there 
was a small party in the congregation for each of the her- 
esies which he had combated, but which most of his 
hearers had probably never heard of before he made his 
onset upon them. One should be sure, before he raises 
the devil, that he is able to lay him. 

Many people work themselves up by disputation some- 
what as Macready worked himself up for his great parts 
on the stage. " Mr. Macready, you know," said a direc- 
tor of Her Majesty's Theatre, "when engaging his 
dresser, whom I knew very well, arranged that when he 
shook him he should pay him double wages, and when 
he struck him his pay should be trebled. I think that 
dresser used to get treble wages all the while Macready 
was at Drury Lane. I went once to Macready's dressing- 
room during the performance. The tragedian had the 
dresser in the corner and was nearly choking him. He 
was rehearsing his part. He afterward rushed upon the 
stage and startled his audience by his brilliant acting." 

You doubtless recollect Voltaire's definition of a phy- 
sician — an unfortunate gentleman, expected every day to 
perform a miracle, — namely, to reconcile health with in- 
temperance. Emerson speaks of the unhappy condition 
where brains are paralyzed by stomach. A celebrated 
French physician, the first time he was called into a 
house, always began by running into the kitchen, embrac- 
ing the cook, and thanking him for a new patient. 
"There was a Lord Russell," said Pope to Spence, 
"who,, by living too luxuriously, had quite spoiled his 
constitution. He did not love sport, but used to go out 
with his- dogs every day, only to hunt for an appetite. If 
he felt any thing of that, he would cry out, ' Oh, I have 
found it ! ' turn short round and ride home again, though 



33^ CHARACTERISTICS. 

they were in the midst of the finest chase. It was this 
lord, who, when he met a beggar, and was entreated by 
him to give him something because he was almost fam- 
ished with hunger, called him a ' happy dog ! ' and envied 
him too much to relieve him." 

Kinglake describes a " savagely happy " party he saw,- 
as he lay one night on the banks of the river Jordan. 
" A little distance from me," he says, " the Arabs made 
a fire, round which they sat in a circle. They were made 
most savagely happy by the tobacco with which I sup- 
plied them, and they had determined to make the whole 
night one smoking festival. The poor fellows had only 
one broken bowl, without any tube at all, but this morsel 
of a pipe they passed round from one to the other, allow- 
ing to each a fixed number of whiffs. In this way they 
passed the whole night." 

In that land of monotony and poverty, a very little 
thing is a great event. It is said there are artisan fami- 
lies in India, and also in Damascus, who have worked at 
the same work day by day for a thousand years ; peasant 
families who have not only tilled the same fields, but have 
gone into them and left them at the same hour, according 
to the season, from a period before the birth of Christ. 
They have no wish for change, no ambition to do better, 
no inclination to roam, no sense of failure because they 
are as their forefathers were, and as their sons will be. 
With such a people, any extreme is but natural — it is 
philosophical. " If we throw a silver coin upon a table," 
says Sir Charles Bell, "and fix the eye upon the centre 
of it, when we remove the coin there is, for a moment, 
a white spot in its place, which presently becomes deep 
black. If we put a red wafer upon a sheet of paper and 
look upon it, and continue to keep the eye fixed on the 
same point, upon removing the wafer, the spot where it 
lay on the white paper will appear green. If we look 
upon a green wafer in the same manner and remove it, 



THE ART OF LIVING. 337 

the spot will be red ; if upon blue or indigo, the paper 
will appear yellow. These phenomena are to be ex- 
plained by considering that the nerve is exhausted by the 
continuance of the impression, and becomes more apt to 
receive sensation from an opposite color." 

" The most exquisitely delicate artists in literature and 
painting," says a writer upon The Intellectual Life, "have 
frequently had reactions of incredible coarseness. With 
the Chateaubriand of Atala there existed an obscene 
Chateaubriand that would burst forth occasionally in talk 
that no biographer would repeat. I have heard (he says) 
the same thing of the sentimental Lamartine. We know 
that Turner, dreamer of enchanted landscapes, took the 
pleasures of a sailor on the spree. A friend said to me 
of one of the most exquisite living geniuses : ' You can 
have no conception of the coarseness of his tastes ; he 
associates with the very lowest women, and enjoys their 
rough brutality.' " 

It has been remarked, that the chief lesson of the lives 
of Byron, or Shelley, or Burns, is how much their inspi- 
ration cost ; but we do not admire the inspiration less be- 
cause it was visibly at the cost of the life. 

Matthew Bramble, in Humphry Clinker, writing to his 
old friend, Dr. Lewis, says : " I begin to think I have put 
myself on the superannuated list too soon, and absurdly 
sought for health in the retreats of laziness. I am per- 
suaded that all valetudinarians are too sedentary, too 
regular, and too cautious. We should sometimes increase 
the motion of the machine, to unclog the wheels of life ; 
and now and then take a plunge amidst the waves of ex- 
cess, in order to case-harden the constitution. I have 
often found a change of company as necessary as a 
change of air, to promote a vigorous circulation of the 
spirits, which is the very essence and criterion of good 
health." Madame de Sevigne wrote to her daughter, " Be 
not uneasy about my health ; the rule I observe at present 
22 



338 CHARACTERISTICS. 

is, to be irregular." Luther advised a young scholar, per-' 
plexed with foreordination and free-will, to get well drunk. 

The night air was thought to be detrimental to the 
health of Theodore Hook, and his method of avoiding it 
was peculiar. Planche refers to it in a pleasant manner. 
" It was day-break," says the dramatist, "broad daylight, 
in fact, before we separated. I had given an imitation of 
Edmund Kean and Holland, in Maturin's tragedy of Ber- 
tram, which had amused Hook ; and, as we were getting 
our hats, he asked me where I lived. On my answering 
' at Brompton,' he said, ' Brompton ! — Why that 's in my 
way home — I live at Fulham. Jump into my cabriolet, 
and I will set you down.' The sun of a fine summer 
morning was rising as we passed Hyde Park Corner. ' I 
have been very ill,' said Hook, ' for some time, and my 
doctors told me never to be out of doors after dark, as 
the night air was the worst thing for me. I have taken 
their advice. I drive into town at four o'clock every 
afternoon, dine at Crockford's, or wherever I may be in- 
vited, and never go home till this time in the morning. I 
have not breathed the night air for the last two months.' " 

It is reported by Suidas that there was a great book of 
old, of King Solomon's writing, which contained medi- 
cines for all manner of diseases, and lay open still as the 
people came into the temple ; but Hezekiah, King of 
Jerusalem, caused it to be taken away, because it made the 
people secure, to neglect their duty in calling and relying 
upon God, out of a confidence in those remedies. God's 
remedies are temperance, exercise, and air. " Oh, tem- 
perance ! " apostrophizes healthy John Buncle. "Divine 
temperance ! Thou art the support of the other virtues, 
the preserver and restorer of health, and the protracter of 
life ! Thou art the maintainer of the dignity and liberty 
of rational beings, from the wretched inhuman slavery of 
sensuality, taste, custom, and example ; and the bright- 
ener of the understanding and memory ! Thou art the 



THE ART OF LIVING. 339 

sweetener of life and all its comforts, the companion of 
reason, and guard of the passions ! Thou art the bounti- 
ful rewarder of thy admirers and followers, thine enemies 
praise thee, and thy friends with rapturous pleasure raise 
up a panegyric in thy praise." Andrew Tiraqueau, to 
whom Rabelais wrote some of his epistles, is said (by his 
biographer), "yearly to have given a book, and by one 
wife, a son to the world, during thirty years, though he 
never drank any thing but water." 

"For my part," says the venerable William Howitt, 
"seeing the victims [of society and late hours] daily 
falling around me, I have preferred the enjoyment of a 
sound mind in a sound body, the blessings of a quiet, do- 
mestic life, and a more restricted, but not less enjoyable 
circle. I am now fast approaching my seventieth year. 
I cannot, indeed, say that I have reached this period, 
active and vigorous as I am, without the assistance of the 
doctors. I have had the constant attendance of four 
famous ones — temperance, exercise, good air, and good 
hours. Often, in earliest years, I labored with my pen 
sixteen hours a day. I never omit walking three or four 
miles, or more, in all weathers. I work hard in my gar- 
den, and could tire down a tolerable man at that kind of 
thing. During my two years' travel in Australia, when 
about sixty, I walked, often under a burning sun, of from 
one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty 
degrees at noon, my twenty miles a day for days and 
weeks together ; worked at digging gold in great heat and 
against young, active men my twelve hours a day, some- 
times standing in a track. I waded through rivers — for 
neither man nor nature had made many bridges — and 
let my clothes dry upon my back ; washed my own linen, 
made and baked my own bread, slept constantly under 
the forest tree, and, through it all was hearty as a roach. 
And how did I manage all this, not only with ease, but 
with enjoyment? Simply because I avoided spirituous 
liquors, as I would avoid the poison of an asp." 



340 CHARACTERISTICS. 

" A year or so ago," said Chief Justice Parsons, "while 
conversing with Dr. James Jackson, I happened to remark 
that, at my age, I felt as if one's clays must be few, and 
the capacity of usefulness well-nigh exhausted. ' You mis- 
take there,' said he. 'At sixty, a man in fair health may 
enter upon a series of years equal in usefulness and happi- 
ness to those of any period, provided proper precautions 
are taken and proper habits formed.' And upon further 
inquiry into these essentials or conditions, I found he 
summed them up in ' employment without labor \ exercise 
without weariness ; temperance without abstinence.' " 

It was the opinion of Grattan that the most healthy 
exercise for elderly persons was indolent movement in the 
open air. 

" Nervousness," said Hunt, " I learned to prevent by 
violent exercise. All fits of nervousness ought to be an- 
ticipated as much as possible with exercise. Indeed, a 
proper, healthy mode of life would save most people 
from these effeminate ills, and most likely cure even their 
inheritors." 

Carlyle records one of his walks. " At 8 p. m. I got 
well to Dumfries, the longest walk I ever made, fifty-four 
miles in one day." Professor Wilson once walked as 
much as seventy miles in the same time. Dickens was a 
great pedestrian — walking again and again from his 
place at Gad's Hill to London and back again in a day. 
Lord Macaulay's long afternoon walks through every part 
of London are familiar to all. 

Gibbon took very little exercise. He had been staying 
for a length of time with Lord Sheffield in the country ; 
and when he was about to go away, the servants could not 
find his hat. " Bless me," said Gibbon, " I certainly left it 
in the hall on my arrival here." He had not stirred out 
of doors during the whole of the visit. 

Plato thought exercise would almost cure a guilty con- 
science. Sydney Smith said, " You will never break 



THE ART OF LIVING. 341 

down in a speech on the day when you have walked 
twelve miles." 

There is a story in the Arabian Nights' of a king who 
had long languished under an ill habit of body, and 
had taken abundance of remedies to no purpose. At 
length, says the fable, a physician cured him by the fol- 
lowing method : he took an hollow ball of wood, and 
filled it with several drugs ; after which he closed it up 
so artificially that nothing appeared. He likewise took a 
mall, and after having hollowed the handle and that part 
which strikes the ball, he inclosed in them several drugs 
after the same manner as in the ball itself. He then 
ordered the sultan, who was his patient, to exercise him- 
self early in the morning with these rightly prepared in- 
struments, till such time as he should sweat ; when, as 
the story goes, the virtue of the medicaments perspiring 
through the wood, had so good an influence on the sul- 
tan's constitution, that they cured him of an indisposition 
which all the compositions he had taken inwardly had not 
been able to remove. This Eastern allegory is finely con- 
trived to show us how beneficial bodily labor is to health, 
and that exercise is the most effectual physic. We ought 
to be ashamed of an indigestion which brisk movement 
out of doors would effectually drive out through the two 
or three million pores in two or three hours. 

Professor Smith, at one time in the medical chair at 
Dartmouth, gave the last ten years of his life to the poor. 
The Professor, in talking with Mr. Webster about his 
experience with the diseases of the poor, said that he 
thought there was more suffering from want of proper 
ventilation than from disease itself. He added, that it 
had been very much impressed upon his mind that people 
did not know the value of good ventilation. He often 
had been called to cases of fevers and the like among 
poor people ; and, upon arriving at the house, he would 
find, perhaps, nobody but a child in attendance, — the 



342 CHARACTERISTICS. 

husband and sons being away at work. He had often, 
before even feeling the pulse of the patient, gone to the 
woodshed, taken wood and split it up, carried it in-doors 
in his own arms, built a fire, and thrown open the win- 
dows ; and he could see the patient begin to revive be- 
fore he had thought of medicine. 

Had God Almighty intended we should stint ourselves 
in air, is it at all likely he would have poured it out all 
round the world forty miles deep ? 

The Persians express a taste for out-doors very forci- 
bly. In Bombay the Parsees use the Victoria Gardens 
chiefly to walk in, — as they express it, " to eat the air." 
Their enjoyment of it is more than animal — it is super- 
sensual. 

We take care of our health ; we lay up money ; we make 
our roof tight, and our clothing sufficient ; but who, asks 
Emerson, provides that he shall not be wanting in the 
best property of all, — friends ? The question was once 
put to Aristotle how we ought to behave to our friends ; 
and the answer he gave was, " As we should wish our 
friends to behave to us." " I look (says Emerson again) 
upon the simple and childish virtues of veracity and hon- 
esty as the root of all that is sublime in character. Speak 
as you think, be what you are, pay your debts of all 
kinds. I prefer to be owned as sound and solvent, and 
my word as good as my bond, and to be what cannot be 
skipped, or dissipated, or undermined, to all the eclat in 
the universe." "No man," said Sir Walter Raleigh, "is 
wise or safe but he that is honest." " There is scarce 
any character so rare," says Sterne, in one of his ser- 
mons, " as a man of real, open, and generous integrity ; 
— who carries his heart in his hand, — who says the 
thing he thinks, and does the thing he pretends. Though 
no one can dislike the character, yet discretion generally 
shakes her head, and the world soon lets him into the 
reason." When you find a person a little better than his 



THE ART OF LIVING. 343 

word, a little more liberal than his promise, a little more 
than borne out in his statement by his facts, a little larger 
in deed than in speech, you recognize, says Holmes, a 
kind of eloquence in that person's utterance not laid 
down in Blair or Campbell. It is said that coming into 
the presence of the Apollo, the body insensibly assumes 
a nobler posture. It seems that there are moral and 
intellectual natures of such purity and elevation and 
strength, that one insensibly assumes a more upright and 
noble attitude in the serene presence of their spotless 
lives. The homage we unconsciously pay to worth is 
illustrated by the sensitive plant of South America. 
When a large surface of ground is covered the effect of 
walking over it is said to be impressive. At each step 
the plants for some distance round suddenly droop, as 
if struck with awe, and a broad track of prostrate herb- 
age, several feet wide, is distinctly marked out by the dif- 
ferent color of the closed leaflets. 

Washington Allston, called, in Rome, the American 
Titian, on one occasion, when crippled in resources in 
London, having sold a picture for a considerable sum, as 
he sat alone at evening, the idea occurred to him that the 
subject, to a perverted taste and prurient imagination, 
might have an immoral effect ; he instantly returned the 
money and regained and destroyed the painting. There 
is an account of an old merchant, who, on his death-bed, 
divided the results of long years of labor. " It is little 
enough, my boys," were almost the last words of the old 
man ; " but there is n't a dirty shilling in the whole of 
it." A gentleman that had a trial at the assizes sent 
Sir Matthew Hale a buck for his table ; so, according 
to Bishop Burnet, his biographer, when he heard the 
man's name, he asked if he were not the same person 
that had sent him venison ; and, finding he was the same, 
he told him he could not suffer the trial to go on till he 
had paid him for his buck. To which the gentleman an- 



344 CHARACTERISTICS. 

swered, that he never sold his venison ; that he had done 
nothing to him that he did not do to every judge that had 
gone that circuit, which was confirmed by several gentle- 
men then present; but all would not do, for the lord 
chief baron had learned from Solomon, that a gift per- 
verteth the way of judgment, and therefore he would not 
suffer the trial to go on till he had paid for the present ; 
upon which the gentleman withdrew the record. 

Albert Gallatin held the office of Secretary of the Treas- 
ury through three presidential terms, under Jefferson and 
Madison, till 1813. Amongst the special missions of 
importance to which he was appointed was one to Eng- 
land in 1 8 18. While in this office he rendered some 
essential service to Alexander Baring in the negotiation 
of a loan for the French Government. Mr. Baring in 
return pressed him to take a part of the loan, offering 
him such advantages in it that without advancing any 
funds he could have realized a fortune. " I thank you," 
was Gallatin's reply ; " I will not accept your obliging 
offer, because a man who has had the direction of the 
finances of his country as long as I have should not die 
rich." Which memorable answer is not more memorable 
than a sentence in a private letter written to the author 
of this composition by the daughter of Robert W. Tayler, 
Comptroller of the Treasury for sixteen years, from 1862 
till the day of his death, and through whose hands passed 
the vouchers for thousands of millions. "At father's 
death," says Miss Jennie, " we were left dependent upon 
ourselves. I speak of this because you were his friend, 
and because it is something of a matter of pride with me, 
that he lived and died a poor man." 

" As things are," says Froude, " we have little idea of 
what a human being ought to be. After the first rudi- 
mental conditions we pass at once into meaningless 
generalities ; and with no knowledge to guide our judg- 
ment, we allow it to be guided by meaner principles ; we 






THE ART OF LIVING. 345 

respect money, we respect rank, we respect ability — 
character is as if it had no existence. How little respect 
do we pay to the breach of this or that commandment in 
comparison to ability ? So wholly impossible is it to ap- 
ply the received opinions on such matters to practice, to 
treat men known to be guilty of what theology calls 
deadly sins, as really guilty of them, that it would almost 
seem we had fallen into a moral anarchy; that ability 
alone is what we regard, without any reference at all, ex- 
cept in glaring and outrageous cases, to moral disquali- 
fications." 

Joubert had a bad opinion of. the lion when he learned 
that his step is oblique. It is Machiavelian morals, that 
virtue itself a man should not trouble himself to obtain, 
but only the appearance of it to the world, because the 
credit and reputation of virtue is a help, but the use of it 
is an impediment. 

Thackeray once lost a pocket-book, containing a pass- 
port and a couple of modest ten-pound notes. The per- 
son who found the article ingenuously put it into the 
box of the post-office, and it was faithfully restored to the 
owner ; but somehow the two ten-pound notes were ab- 
sent. It was, however, a great comfort to the great nov- 
elist to get the passport, and the pocket-book, which was 
worth about nine pence. 

The cunning of Louis XI. admitted to one or two pe- 
culiar forms of oath the force of a binding obligation, 
which he denied to all others, strictly preserving the se- 
cret, which mode of swearing he really accounted obliga- 
tory, as one of the most valuable of state mysteries. 

" I heard Le Sage say," said Spence, " I thank God, 
I don't wish for any one thing that I could not pray for 
aloud." Madame du Deffand objected to praying not to 
be led into temptation, on the ground that she had found 
temptation very pleasant. She also disliked praying to 
be made good, for fear that she should be taken at her 



346 CHARACTERISTICS. 

word. She did not believe with Jerrold, that conscience, 
be it ever so little a worm while we live, grows suddenly 
to a serpent on our death-bed. " My lord cardinal," said 
Anne of Austria to Richelieu, " there is one fact which 
you seem to have entirely forgotten. God is a sure pay- 
master. He may not pay at the end of every week or 
month or year ; but I charge you, remember that he pays 
in the end." 

There are three sorts of lies, in the judgment of Ma- 
homet, which will not be taken into account at the last 
judgment : ist, one told to reconcile two persons at vari- 
ance ; 2d, that which a husband tells when he promises 
any thing to his wife ; and, 3d, a chieftain's word in time 
of war. Joe Gargery made no exceptions. " Lies is lies," 
he said to Pip. " Howsoever they come, they did n't 
ought to come, and they come from the father of lies, 
and work round to the same. Don't you tell no more of 
them, Pip. . . . Lookee here, Pip, at what is said to you 
by a true friend. Which this to you the true friend says. 
If you can't get to be oncommon through going straight, 
you '11 never get to do it through going crooked. So 
don't tell no more on 'em, Pip, and live well and die 
happy." Lying, in the opinion of Leigh Hunt, is the 
commonest and most conventional of all the vices. It 
pervades, more or less, every class of the community, 
and is fancied to be so necessary to the carrying on of 
human affairs, that the practice is tacitly agreed upon ; 
nay, in other terms, openly avowed. In the monarch, it 
is kingcraft. In the statesman, expediency. In the 
churchman, mental reservation. In the lawyer, the inter- 
est of his client. In the merchant, manufacturer, and 
shopkeeper, secrets of trade. There is no lie, said John 
Sterling, that many men will not believe ; there is no man 
who does not believe many lies ; and there is no man who 
believes only lies. 

It is the conclusion of Professor Venable, that many 



THE ART OF LIVING. 347 

teachers of morality destroy the good effect of judicious 
counsel by too much talk, as a chemical precipitate is re- 
dissolved in an excess of the precipitating agent. If you 
would convince a man that he does wrong, said Thoreau, 
do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will 
believe what they see. Let them see. Dr. Telfair, a 
philosopher and a Christian, used to insist that the doc- 
trine of the Golden Rule is not to be preached, but only 
to be announced. It is for self-application — to be re- 
ceived and acted on by each one, and not to be taught 
by him to another. A rule, some one has said, which 
you do not apply, is no rule at all. " My father," said 
the Attic Philosopher, " feared every thing that had the 
appearance of a lesson. He used to say that virtue 
could make herself devoted friends, but she did not take 
pupils ; therefore he was not anxious to teach goodness ; 
he contented himself with sowing the seeds of it, cer- 
tain that experience would make them grow." "Good- 
ness," said Lamb, "blows no trumpet, nor desires to 
have it blown." " I hoped for much advantage," said 
Leslie, "from studying under such a master as Fuseli, 
but he said little in the Academy. He generally came 
into the room once in the course of every evening, and 
rarely without a book in his hand. He would take any 
vacant place among the students, and sit reading nearly 
the whole time he stayed with us. I believe he was right. 
For those students who are born with powers that will 
make them eminent, it is sufficient to place fine works 
of art before them. They do not want instruction, and 
those that do are not worth it. Art may be learnt, but 
cannot be taught." 

Plutarch says of Julius Caesar that he won all his bat- 
tles by saying to his soldiers, "come," rather than "go." 
So it is in morality, thought James Freeman Clarke. 
Who are those who have done us good ? Who but those 
whose goodness has inspired us with love of virtue ? Not 



34 8 CHARACTERISTICS. 

denunciation, but example, touches the heart. That is 
why the martyrs' blood is the seed of the church. We 
had been denouncing slavery as sin, with small apparent 
effect, but when John Brown went down into Virginia, 
and died on the scaffold out of love for the slave, there 
came a sudden inspiration to us all. The brave Sir Jacob 
Astley's prayer, immediately before the advance, at the 
battle of Edgehill, was short and fervent. " O, Lord, 
thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget 
thee, do not thou forget me. Come on, boys ! " At one 
time Nelson's ship, the Boreas, was full of young midship- 
men, of whom there were not less than thirty on board ; 
and happy were they whose lot it was to be placed with 
such a captain. If he perceived that a boy was afraid at 
first going aloft, he would say to him in a friendly man- 
ner, " Well, sir, I am going a race to the mast-head, and 
beg that I may meet you there." The poor little fellow 
instantly began to climb, and got up how he could, — 
Nelson never noticed in what manner • but when they 
met at the top, spoke cheerfully to him ; and would say, 
how much any person was to be pitied who fancied that 
getting up was either dangerous or difficult. 

Humanity — human nature — within and without — is 
well illustrated in the baobab-tree of Africa. Dr. Liv- 
ingstone, in his Missionary Travels, describes it. The 
description is interesting in itself, and interesting for the 
purpose we use it. " No external injury, not even fire, 
can destroy the tree from without ; nor can any injury be 
done from within, as it is quite common to find it hollow. 
Nor does cutting down exterminate it, for I saw instances 
in Angola in w T hich it continued to grow in length after it 
was lying on the ground. Those trees called exogenous 
grow by means of successive layers on the outside. The 
inside may be dead, or even removed altogether, without 
affecting the life of the tree. The other class is called 
endogenous, and increases by layers applied to the in- 



THE ART OF LIVING. 349 

side ; and when the hollow there is full, the growth is 
stopped — the tree must die. Any injury is felt most 
severely by the first class on the bark — by the second 
on the inside ; while the inside of the exogenous may be 
removed and the outside of the endogenous may be cut, 
without stopping the growth in the least." 

In Dickens's Miss Havisham, " the vanity of sorrow 
had become a master mania, like the vanity of penitence, 
the vanity of remorse, the vanity of unworthiness, and 
other monstrous vanities that have been curses in this 
world." Holmes describes the widow Rowans in " the 
full bloom of ornamental sorrow. A very shallow crape 
bonnet, frilled and froth-like, allowed the parted raven 
hair to show its glossy smoothness. A jet pin heaved 
upon her bosom with every sigh of memory, or emotion 
of unknown origin. Jet bracelets shone with every move- 
ment of her slender hands, cased in close-fitting black 
gloves. Her sable dress was ridged with manifold 
flounces, from beneath which a small foot showed itself 
from time to time, clad in the same hue of mourning. 
Every thing about her was dark, except the whites of her 
eyes and the enamel of her teeth. The effect was com- 
plete. Gray's Elegy was not a more complete composi- 
tion." 

" You once observed to me," wrote Dr. Channing to 
Lucy Aiken, "that every where the Sovereign is wor- 
shiped ; with us, that sovereign is an idol called Gentil- 
ity, and costly are the offerings laid upon the altar. 
Dare to make conversation in the most accomplished so- 
ciety something of an exercise of the mind, and not a 
mere dissipation, and you instantly become that thing of 
horror, a Bore." 

That caustic satirist, Jerrold, says, " There are a good 
many pious people who are as careful of their religion as 
of their best service of china, only using it on holiday 
occasions, for fear it should get chipped or flawed in 



350 CHARACTERISTICS. 

working-day wear." " Eve," says the same wicked wit, 
"ate the apple, that she might dress." 

Emerson, in one of his Essays, expresses the opinion 
that " The end of all political struggle is to establish mo- 
rality as the basis of all legislation. 'T is not free insti- 
tutions, 't is not a democracy that is the end, — no, but 
only the means. Morality is the end of government. 
We want a state of things in which crime will not pay, a 
state of things which allows every man the largest liberty 
compatible with the liberty of every other man." Man, 
it is very truly said, will not be made temperate or virtu- 
ous by the strong hand of the law, but by the teaching 
and influence of moral power. A man is no more made 
sober by act of parliament than a woman is made chaste. 

" They that cry down moral honesty," said old John 
Selden, " cry down that which is a great part of religion, 
my duty towards God, and my duty towards man. What 
care I to see a man run after a sermon, if he cozens and 
cheats as soon as he comes home." "If thou hadst but 
discretion, Sancho, equal to thy natural abilities, thou 
mightest take to the pulpit, and go preaching about the 
world." "A good liver is the best preacher," replied 
Sancho, " and that is all the divinity I know." " Or need 
know," responded the Don. 

" There are," said Miss Spence, in John Buncle, " heav- 
enly-mindedness, and contempt of the world, and choos- 
ing rather to die than commit a moral evil. Such things, 
however, are not much esteemed by the generality of 
Christians : Most people laugh at them, and look upon 
them as indiscretions; therefore there is but little true 
Christianity in the world. It has never," she said, "been 
my luck to meet with many people that had these three 
necessary qualifications." 

One day, when some one remarked, " Christianity is 
part and parcel of the law of the land," Rolfe, afterward 
Lord Chancellor of England, whispered to a barrister 



THE ART OF LIVING. 35 I 

near by, " Were you ever employed to draw an indictment 
against a man for not loving his neighbor as himself ? " ' 

An eminent German saw a poor old woman at a station 
of a calvary in Bavaria, who was crawling on her knees 
up the hill. She told her story. A rich lady who had 
sinned was required by her confessor to go on her knees 
as many times up the calvary ; but she might do it by 
deputy. She paid this poor woman 24 kreutzers (17 
cents) for a day's journey on her knees, " which," said 
the woman, "is poor wages for a day's hard labor; and 
I have three children to maintain. And unless charitable 
souls give me more, my children must go half fed." 

Every body is familiar with a class of assassins in Brit- 
ish India (now happily nearly exterminated), organized 
into a society, with chiefs, a service, a free-masonry, and 
even a religion, which has its fanaticism, and its devotion, 
its agents, its emissaries, its assistants, its moving bodies, 
its passive comrades who contribute by their subscriptions 
to " the good work." Comte de Warren describes it in 
his work on British India. " It is a community of Thugs, 
a religious and working confraternity, who war against 
the human race by exterminating them, and whose origin 
is lost in the night of ages. The foundation of the 
Thuggee confraternity is a religous belief, the worship of 
Bohwanie, a dark divinity who loves nothing but carnage, 
and hates* especially the human race. Her most accept- 
able sacrifices are human victims, and the more of these 
are offered up in this world, the more will you be recom- 
pensed in the next by joys of the soul and the senses, 
and by females always young, fresh, and lovely. If the 
assassin should meet with the scaffold in his career, he 
dies with enthusiasm, a martyr whom a palm awaits. To 
obey his divine mistress, he murders, without anger and 
without remorse, the old man, the woman, and the child. 
To his colleagues he must be charitable, humane, gener- 
ous, devoted, sharing all in common, because they, as well 
as he, are ministers and adopted children of Bohwanie." 



352 CHARACTERISTICS. 

" The fasts of the Greek church," Kinglake tells us, 
" produce an ill effect upon the character of the people, 
for they are carried to such an extent, as to bring about 
a bona fide mortification of the flesh ; the febrile irrita- 
tion of the frame operating in conjunction with the de- 
pression of spirits occasioned by abstinence, will so far 
answer the object of the rite, as to engender some relig- 
ious excitement, but this is of a morbid and gloomy char- 
acter, and it seems to be certain, that along with the 
increase of sanctity, there comes a fierce desire for the 
perpetration of dark crimes. The number of murders 
committed during Lent is reported greater than at any 
other time of the year." 

As an instance of the little influence the religion of the 
Italians had upon their morals, Hiram Powers told Haw- 
thorne of one of his servants, who desired leave to set 
up a small shrine of the Virgin in her room — a cheap 
print, or bas relief, or image, such as are sold every 
where at the shops — and to burn a lamp before it ; she 
engaging, of course, to supply the oil at her own expense. 
By and by her oil-flask appeared to possess a miraculous 
property of replenishing itself, and Mr. Powers took 
measures to ascertain where the oil came from. It 
turned out that the servant had all the time been stealing 
the oil from him, and keeping up her daily sacrifice and 
worship to the Virgin by this constant theft. Haw- 
thorne's wife came in contact with a pickpocket at the 
entrance of an Italian church ; and, failing in his enter- 
prise upon her purse, he passed in, dipped his thieving 
fingers in the holy -water, and paid his devotion at a 
shrine. Missing the purse, he said his prayers, in the 
hope, perhaps, that the saint would send him better luck 
another time. 

" It is easier," says a thoughtful English writer, " to be 
a learned man than a good man. Why morals should be 
so difficult, stirs another and a deeper question ; for we 



THE ART OF LIVING. 353 

must suppose that there is a wisdom in the fact. A ques- 
tion of creeds is but a petty question at any time. The 
real question lies deeper." 

In England, Theodore Parker met an Episcopal clergy- 
man whose liberal sentiments enticed him into conversa- 
tion. " I asked him," said the American divine, " if it 
were not possible for all classes of Christians to agree to 
differ about theological symbols, ceremonies, disciplines, 
modes, and the like, while they fell back on the great 
principles of religion and morality ; in a word, on relig- 
ion and morality themselves ; and I told him that I had 
aimed in my humble way to bring this about. He said 
he liked the plan much, and did not see why all should 
not unite on these principles as they were expressed in 
the Thirty-Nine Articles." When Oliver Cromwell was* 
contending for the mastery, he besieged a certain Catho- 
lic town. The place made a stout resistance ; but at 
length, being about to be taken, the poor Catholics pro- 
posed terms of capitulation, among which was one stipu- 
lating for the toleration of their religion. The paper 
containing the conditions being presented to Cromwell, 
he put on his spectacles, and, after deliberately examin- 
ing it, cried out, "Oh, yes; granted, granted, certainly; 
but," he added, with stern determination, " if one of them 
shall dare be found attending mass, he shall be instantly 
hanged ! " 

It is not improbable, if the disposition of a great part 
of the clergy continues, to give less and less attention to 
what the world esteems as morals, apart from what they 
esteem religion, that a system of schools will arise, in 
which radical morals, as an essential part of religion, will 
be taught to the people. Attempts to divorce them, only 
tend to weaken and confuse the public conscience, while 
they diminish the influence of spiritual leaders. 

The time may come also, we opine, when chairs of 
common sense will be set up in the universities. The 
2 3 



354 CHARACTERISTICS. 

trouble may be to fill them ; but suitable men, when 
wanted, will be found. The distinction between scholar- 
ship and usefulness will be better defined. Boys will 
more and more be educated for the uses of education ; 
and so much that must be unlearned will give place to 
what may be applied. 

The sculptor Chan trey pointed out to one of his friends 
the bad effects of light from two windows falling on a 
column in the Louvre, and said, " The ancients worked 
with a knowledge of the place where the statue was to 
be, and anticipated the light to which it would be ex- 
posed." In like manner, education should be adapted to 
the character and wants of each individual, anticipating, 
as far as practicable, occupation and position in life. 

" What is true by the lamp is not always true by the 
sun," says Joubert. The bad effect — perhaps the only 
bad effect — of education is what has been called " its 
inflating tendency — to turn the educated into a clique or 
caste who think of those who have no education as the 
Pharisees thought of the ' accursed ' people who knew 
not the law." 

The boy should be taught to have some apprehension 
of the diffusion and universality of intelligence ; that no 
man has it all, but every man a little ; that the average is 
always worthy of respectful consultation ; that the edu- 
cation of the schools is but as the scaffolding and tools 
to the builder (bearing in mind all the time that the 
building that is to endure is not made with hands) ; that 
the hodman and the farm hand must teach him many 
things he must know ; that the Commentaries of Caesar 
— valuable enough for culture — and the maxims of 
philosophy, must give way again and again, and without 
humiliation, to the commonest experience of the meanest 
man, whom he would despise till he has fairly put his 
mind and fact to his in the conflict of affairs ; in fine, that 
he must surrender his self-conceit, be put upon his feet 



THE ART OF LIVING. 355 

with the crowd, and totally unlearn and forget very much 
that he has learned before he can begin to be truly sen- 
sible and wise. 

Sensible men, it is truly said, are very rare. A sensi- 
ble man does not brag, avoids introducing the names of 
his creditable companions, omits himself as habitually as 
another man obtrudes himself in the discourse, and is 
content with putting his fact or theme simply on its 
ground. Conduct is three-fourths of life, thought Mat- 
thew Arnold, and a man who works for conduct, therefore, 
works for more than a man who works for intelligence. 
" I always feel happy near Meyer," said Eckermann, 
" probably because he is a self-relying, satfsfied person, 
who takes but little notice of the circumstances around 
him, but at suitable intervals exhibits his own comfortable 
soul. At the same time, he is everywhere well grounded, 
possesses the greatest treasures of knowledge, and a 
memory to which the most remote events are as present 
as if they happened yesterday. He has a preponderance 
of understanding which might make us dread him, if it 
did not rest upon the noblest culture ; but, as it is, his 
quiet presence is always agreeable, always instructive." 

Life should teach us our deficiencies, and our indus- 
try should supply them. The Moravian missionaries very 
soon found out and acknowledged that they must teach 
their converts to count the number three before they 
taught them the doctrine of the Trinity. 

Immorality, as before affirmed, is often only ignorance. 
A set of constituents once waited upon the member of 
parliament whom they had chosen, to request that he 
would vote against the Minister. "What ! " he answered, 
with an oath ; " have I not bought you ? and do you think 
I will not sell you ? " 

How to live with unfit companions, is an important 
part of education ; for, with such, said a wise man, life is 
for the most part spent : and experience teaches little bet- 



356 CHARACTERISTICS. 

ter than our earliest instinct of self-defense, namely, not 
to engage, not to mix yourself in any manner with them ; 
but let their madness spend itself unopposed. 

A sensible man considers his situation, and is careful 
not to over-estimate himself. His ears, his eyes, and his 
reflection make him circumspect. He is not apt to be 
in the predicament of the man who was anxious to be 
introduced to a deaf woman, but when he was presented, 
and one end of her ear-trumpet was put into his hand, 
had nothing to say. " Nature, I am persuaded," says 
Rabelais, " did not without a cause frame our ears open, 
putting thereto no gates at all, nor shutting them up with 
any manner of inclosures, as she hath done upon the 
tongue, the eyes, and other such outjutting parts of the 
body. The cause, as I imagine, is, to the end that every 
day and every night, and that continually, we may be 
ready to hear, and by a perpetual hearing apt to learn." 

Common sense, with common reflection, is not apt to 
suffer from the confusion, in common matters, of cause 
and effect, which certain ignorant islanders once dis- 
played, referred to in Boswell's Johnson. They invented 
all sorts of superstitions to account for their being seized 
with colds in their heads whenever a ship arrived, until it 
occurred to an intelligent reverend gentleman to find the 
cause in the fact that a vessel could enter the harbor 
only when a strong north-east wind was blowing. And 
in a certain part of Scotland the servants on a farm suf- 
fered every spring from fever and ague, which was re- 
ceived as a judgment of God upon their sins, until with 
proper drainage of the land the disorder disappeared. 

Big words, where little ones were better, generally arise 
from an ignorant misapprehension of means to ends. A 
good story is told of a senator, staying at a hotel in St. 
Louis. He saw from his window that, just across the 
street, a house was on fire. He instantly raised the win- 
dow, and began to shout to the people, as they passed 



THE ART OF LIVING. 357 

along, in stentorian tones, " Conflagration ! conflagra- 
tion ! conflagration ! " But to his utter amazement, the 
people paid no attention to him whatever. Finally, be- 
coming exasperated, he threw away the word conflagra- 
tion, and began to shout at the top of his voice, " Fire ! " 
The people understood at once, and the fire was put out.- 

A great advantage of common sense with education is 
to enable us to see the direct way to an object or result. 
There is an incident of a well-known Oxford man, who 
one day saw a favorite pupil who was within an hour to 
take his place in the school for final examination. " I 'm 
in for Butler's Analogy," said the student, " and have not 
had time to read it through." " All Butler's governing 
ideas," mildly remarked the tutor, " are reducible to four. 
You can learn them in a quarter of an hour, and you 
must manipulate them as well as you can." The pupil 
passed a capital examination in Butler. Short cuts are 
good, if you know how to take them. 

Rufus Choate and Daniel Webster were once opposed 
to each other as lawyers in a suit which turned on the 
size of certain wheels. Mr. Choate filled the air with the 
rockets of rhetoric, and dazzled the jury, but Mr. Web- 
ster caused the wheels to be brought into court and put 
behind a screen. When he rose to speak the screen was 
removed, and his only reply to Choate's eloquence was, 
" Gentlemen ! there are the wheels ! " 

At Palermo, Lord Dundonald met with Lord Nelson, 
and through life adopted as his own the injunction he re- 
ceived from the victor of Trafalgar : " Never mind ma- 
noeuvres ; always go at 'em." 

The prime mischief of modern education, mental and 
moral, is " cramming." Fuseli did not attempt to make 
all his pupils alike by teaching. He saw in Wilkie, Mul- 
ready, Etty, Landseer, and Haydon, peculiar talents, and 
through his "wise neglect," they became distinguished. 
Coleridge opposed the system of " cramming " children, 



358 CHARACTERISTICS. 

and especially satirized the moral rules for juvenile read- 
ers, lately introduced. " I infinitely prefer," he said, 
" The Seven Champions of Christendom, Jack the Giant- 
Killer, and such like : for at least they make the child for- 
get himself : but when in your good-child stories, a little 
boy comes in and says, ' Mamma, I met a poor beggar- 
man, and gave him the sixpence you gave me yesterday. 
Did I do right ? ' 'Oh, yes, my dear ; to be sure you 
did.' This is not virtue but vanity. Such lessons do 
not teach goodness, but, if I might hazard such a word, 
goodiness." 

Sainte-Beuve, it is related, as he grew older, came to 
regard all experience as a single great book, in which to 
study for a few years ere we go to heaven ; and it seemed 
all one to him whether you should read in chapter XX., 
which is the differential calculus, or in chapter XXXIX., 
which is hearing the band play in the gardens. As a 
matter of fact, an intelligent person, looking out of his 
eyes, and hearkening in his ears, with a smile on his face 
all the time, will get more true education than many an- 
other in a life of heroic vigils. 

The motto to Leigh Hunt's Indicator is a description of 
a bird in the interior of Africa, called the bee-cuckoo, or 
honey-bird, whose habits would rather seem to belong to 
the interior of Fairyland, but they have been well authen- 
ticated. It indicates to honey-hunters where the nests of 
wild bees are to be found. It calls them with a cheerful 
cry, which they answer ; and on finding itself recognized, 
flies and hovers over a hollow tree containing the honey. 
While they are occupied in collecting it, the bird goes to 
a little distance, where he observes all that passes ; and 
the hunters, when they have helped themselves, take care 
to leave him his portion of the food. 
\ A happy man or woman, some one has said, is a better 
thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a ra- 
diating focus of good will ; and their entrance into a room 






THE ART OF LIVING. 359 

is as though another candle had been lighted. We need 
not care whether they could prove the forty-seventh prop- 
osition ; they do a better thing than that, they practically 
demonstrate the great theorem of the reasonableness of 
life. 

You remember the immortal fireside saint, St. Jenny, 
created and canonized by Jerrold. " St. Jenny was wed- 
ded to a very poor man ; they had scarcely bread to keep 
them ; but Jenny was of so sweet a temper that even 
want bore a bright face, and Jenny always smiled. In the 
worst seasons Jenny would spare crumbs for the birds, 
and sugar for the bees. Now it so happened that one 
autumn a storm rent their cot in twenty places apart ; 
when, behold, between the joints, from the basement to 
the roof, there was nothing but honeycomb and honey — 
a little fortune for St. Jenny and her husband, in honey. 
Now, some said it was the bees, but more declared it was 
the sweet temper of St. Jenny that had filled the poor 
man's house with honey." 

As solace alone, books are very much to many ; " but the 
scholar only knows," says Washington Irving, "how dear 
these silent, yet eloquent, companions of pure thoughts 
and innocent hours become in the seasons of adversity. 
When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these 
only retain their steady value. When friends grow cold, 
and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civil- 
ity and commonplace, these only continue the unaltered 
countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true 
friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sor- 
row." 

We are told of an Indian bird, which, enjoying the sun- 
shine all the day, secures a faint reflection of it in the 
night, by sticking glow-worms over the walls of its nest. 
And something of this light is obtained, it is observed, 
from the books read in youth, to be remembered in age. 
" Summer's green all girded up in sheaves." 



360 CHARACTERISTICS. 

At the battle of Edgehill, the Prince of Wales and the 
Duke of York, then ten and twelve years old, were on the 
hill. " They were placed," says Lord Nugent, " under 
the care of Dr. William Harvey, afterward so famous for 
his discoveries concerning the circulation of the blood, 
and then Physician in Ordinary to the King. During the 
action, forgetful both of his position and of his charge, 
and too sensible of the value of time to a philosophic 
mind to be cognizant of bodily danger, he took out a 
book, and sat him down on the grass to read, till, warned 
by the sound of the bullets that grazed and whistled 
round him, he rose, and withdrew the princes to a securer 
distance." 

Scott (one of his biographers tells us) received a let- 
ter from his old friend, Sir Adam Ferguson, captain in the 
58th regiment, then serving in the Peninsula. The gal- 
lant soldier had just received a copy of The Lady of the 
Lake, and had it with him when his company was posted 
on a piece of ground exposed to the enemy's shot. The 
men were ordered to lie prostrate, and, while they kept 
that attitude, the captain, kneeling at their head, read 
aloud the description of the battle of BeaP an Dhuine, in 
the sixth canto, and the listening soldiers only interrupted 
him by an occasional huzza as the French shot struck the 
bank above them. 

It has been said, that of all the toils in which man en- 
gages, none are nobler in their origin or their aim than 
those by which he endeavors to become more wise. We 
may say, as well, that no one should be discouraged by 
this discovery, that " the more there is known, the more 
it is perceived there is to be known ; " for, it is also true, 
that " the infinity of knowledge to be acquired runs par- 
allel with the infinite faculty of knowing, and its develop- 
ment." The possibilities of infinite culture can be only 
imperfectly anticipated on this " shoal of time." Heaven 
orders that our intellects can be employed only in part. 



THE ART OF LIVING. 36 1 

The human brain is wonderfully constructed ; but it has 
its limitations. The mental physiologist tells us that a 
fragment of the gray substance of it, not larger than the 
head of a small pin, contains parts of many thousands of 
commingled globes and fibres. Of ganglion globules alone, 
according to the estimate of the physiologist Meynert, 
there cannot be less than six hundred millions in the con- 
volutions of a human brain. They are, indeed, in such 
infinite numbers that possibly only a small portion of the 
globules provided are ever turned to account in even the 
most energetic brains. Dr. Maudsley contrasts the fif- 
teen thousand words which Shakespeare employs for the 
expression of his ideas with the hundreds of millions of 
brain globules that must have been concerned in the pro- 
duction of this intellectual harvest. The little that we 
can know here, is, at best, only the alphabet of the course 
progressive and unending. What we cannot see now, 
will be apparent hereafter to our improved vision, as the 
high-flying birds, twenty thousand feet above the earth, 
and countless stars of heaven, are seen clearly by the 
telescope. The parchment used by the ancients, from 
which one writing was erased, and on which another was 
written, was called a palimpsest. " What else than a 
natural and mighty palimpsest," exclaims De Quincey, 
" is the human brain ? Everlasting layers of ideas, im- 
ages, feelings, have fallen upon your brain softly as light. 
Each succession has served to bury all that went before. 
And yet, in reality, not one has been extinguished." 
Doubtless it will appear, at the great restoration, that 
enough has been impressed, in one short earthly exist- 
ence, to more than compensate for all its ills, and hope- 
fully to encourage a start in the life that is illimitable. 

Yet, in the here, we long for the fruition of the hereaf- 
ter. The sigh and the longing are irrepressible. The 
San Carlos Theatre at Naples was so placed that Vesu- 
vius might be seen from the royal box. Ah ! if only it 



362 CHARACTERISTICS. 

were possible, in the drama of this life, to be so disposed 
as to have occasional visions of the Eternal. 

One day a good old man saw a bird fluttering in the 
road before him. He took it up, and found it was a 
robin, whose plumage was so filled with the burs of the 
fields that it could not fly. He picked out the burs ten- 
derly, and the creature flew away. Alas ! the clogs, en- 
tanglements, and limitations. But how glorious the 
emancipation 1 






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